


Two Of Me, Two Of You

by Cazio



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alt!Steve - Freeform, Alt!Tony, Angst, Cazio, Dimension Travel, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pain, Romance, Slow Burn, Stony - Freeform, Superhusbands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-05-13 12:23:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 36,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14748794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cazio/pseuds/Cazio
Summary: After a nasty fight with Tony, Steve is thrown into another dimension where he has died and Alt!Tony is trying to come to terms with his loss. As Steve learns about his alternate self and the world he and Tony changed together, Steve is less inclined to return home.(Prompt fill: Steve ends up kidnapped by a slightly unstable alt!tony from another dimension where alt!steve is dead. steve actually ends up feeling conflicted because he finds the alt!dimension (and even alt!tony?) preferable to the one he left behind.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to anon for giving me this lovely prompt! get ready for another wild ride!
> 
> catch me on tumblr [here](http://chubbydino.tumblr.com), i'd love to hear your thoughts there or in the comments/kudos!

Of all of the things Steve Rogers ought to be prepared for, being thrown around in time still caught him off guard.

His apartment in Brooklyn wasn’t much. A little studio loft with a nice view of a few trees on the street, and he even had one that partially blocked a window, giving the wood floor a green cast and sent the light dappling across the boards. Many people and organizations had offered him much fancier places to live, and sometimes Steve did spend a few weeks at the Avengers Compound upstate, but he liked his studio. Besides, the price tag was absurd for this little place, he couldn’t imagine what it would be in Manhattan or wherever else they wanted him to live.

Steve woke up refreshed, like he always did, and swung his legs off the side of his bed. A quick glance out the window showed that the day was overcast. His phone buzzed insistently where it lay on his dresser, but Steve made no move to check it. Not yet. He took solace in these quiet moments before he was fully awake, where he lived in the margins between still sleeping and supposed-to-have-texted-back-by-now.

Especially since last night had culminated in a particularly nasty argument between him and Tony.

Dating Tony Stark had never entered Steve’s mind until a few months ago, when he suddenly started receiving gifts in the mail, at his desk in the Tower, and in his room in the compound. It had only taken two or three to figure out that they were from Tony, but Steve played the game until one day Tony was one of those gifts, asking him out to dinner.

Steve had been uncertain from the beginning, about dating, about dating a man, about dating _Tony Stark_. It was rocky, to say the least. They didn’t trust each other as fully as they should, and it showed.

Last night was yet another example of that uncertainty flaring up into defensiveness, sharp tones, and all out yelling.

With a quiet sigh, Steve finally stood, sleepily rubbing his eyes. His phone buzzed again, and he saw Tony’s name flash across the screen. Of course.

_Need you to give approval on a few things. Since you’re the boss and all._

There were a few other texts: one from Sam, one from Bucky, a picture from Natasha presumably taken inside a fancy nightclub in an effort to get him to come along.

_Just woke up. Be there in an hour._

He yawned as he clicked the phone to lock, and ran a hand through his hair to see if it was greasy. It wasn’t. It never was. Even so, Steve made sure to keep a strict routine. Every morning he showered, shaved, and dressed nicely when he wasn’t going in to do Avengers work. His outfits had gradually adapted with the times, but he always felt more comfortable in a button down or oversized t-shirt than the sweaters and fitted clothing he seemed to receive in abundance every Christmas. He did like sweatpants, though. Those could stay.

Just as he had lathered his face in shaving scream, his phone buzzed on the countertop beside him.

_No run this morning?_

Steve frowned. He didn’t like that such a simple text made his insides churn with irritation. It felt like Tony was just trying to rub it in that he was still upset—undoubtedly exactly what Tony was doing. Some days, like today, it didn’t even feel like they were dating. If they even were anymore. They hadn’t been on a date in weeks.

_Not today. Too rainy last night. Talk to you when I get there._

A bullshit excuse, but Steve didn’t have anything else. He would much rather spend the morning being lazy, relaxing on his comfy sectional that still smelled like the furniture store than having another screaming match with Tony.

Tony didn’t text back, so Steve continued shaving, drawing the razor over his cheeks and jaw in practiced lines. He had always admired the men he’d seen in his youth, shaving with little bits of cream, looking at their reflections through puddles or windows. And during the war, through all of the carnage and bloodshed, men still made a habit of shaving. Without mirrors, they often just ended up helping each other out. Steve could still remember the time he’d nicked Bucky’s jaw, how red the blood has been.

Now he had an electric razor sitting in a drawer that looked like some sort of alien machinery, with three circular spinning blades and the supposed ability to shave dry without cuts. As much as Steve tried to put his trust in new technology, that was one he just couldn’t get past.

Once he was satisfied with his shave, Steve quickly dressed, forgoing the shower in order to make it to Manhattan on time. He still took the train when he could, and not very many people ever recognized him there. Captain America really wasn’t all that stand-out without a mask or uniform. And while Steve was willing to admit his jawline was a little sharper than most, this was New York. Models and movie stars walked among regular people. Nobody really took much notice anymore.

He hefted his backpack on and locked the door behind him before setting out on the sidewalk. The cement was still damp from the night’s rains, and water still trickled down the curb as he traversed the uneven sidewalk panels. He loved Brooklyn, even now. Though it was far more wealthy in this day and age, it still held greenery and charm that no other borough had.

Even the stairs down to the subway seemed more tucked away in Brooklyn.  Though they weren’t any less traveled, Steve appreciated that subway stations usually seemed calmer than throughout the rest of the city.

He looked both ways before crossing the street, then headed down the stairs into the station. In the depths he heard a train rattling by, and the familiar heat and humidity rose to greet him as he descended.

But as he turned the corner to go down another set of stairs, everything went black.

Steve paused mid-step, loosely gripping the handrail. He looked around, as though some sort of light would show, but none did.

It didn’t make any sense. As he turned around, he saw no light coming from the stairwell, where there definitely should have been light. His brain couldn’t comprehend it, and he was suddenly dizzy, trying to right himself where he was perched on the stair.

When he couldn’t, Steve fell forward, landing harshly on the grimy subway floor. He caught himself with his hands, and pushed back up as effortlessly as he would have if he’d planned the fall.

Back on his feet, he noticed that the lights were back on, but something was off. It took a moment for Steve to realize why. He looked down at his hands, and they were…spotless.

No grime from the station floor. No wet slime from the rain.

The floor was…clean. The concrete looked new, the lines freshly painted. The grout in the subway tile was clean, and the only sign of unkemptness was the pieces of posters from old advertisements still stuck on the corkboard. There was no graffiti on the platform, no smell of mildew—the air wasn’t even humid. He inhaled and didn’t get the sense that his lungs were filling with grime. It was _clean_.

Steve brushed his hands on his pants even though they weren’t wet, and cleared his throat. His backpack was still snug at his shoulders, but he didn’t trust anything else. Something was definitely wrong. People sat on benches (he’d never seen any benches in the subway stations that weren’t peeling) and—

Wait a minute.

Steve dug through his pocket, pulling out his metrocard. He spun on his heel, but saw no turnstiles, no kiosks, no gates.  

The roar of an approaching train was promising though. Steve pocketed his card and carefully stepped forward toward the platform, awaiting the train.

Surprisingly, it looked like a normal subway train. It was cleaner too, but had some dirt and grime. It rolled to a smooth stop, and Steve fell behind a young man who had been waiting nearby, slipping into the train car.

He was met with a sleek interior that echoed the kind of car he was used to, but much more advanced. Screens showed exactly where they were on the route, potential delays, and estimated times for each stop. Advertisements played across surfaces where posters used to be, and as the train started to move the windows changed to a peaceful backdrop of what looked like English countryside.

He peered up at the route again, and took a deep breath when he spotted the Stark Plaza stop still in its same place. Thank god. Whatever was happening here, whatever year he was in, he was at least still in New York. Tony was still here, presumably.

There was an enormous amount of comfort in knowing just that one little fact. Whatever had just happened, Tony could take care of it. He could fix it, or at least tell him what was going on.

The train announced the next stop, and a few passengers shuffled to make room for a bigger crowd. Steve noticed little compartments near the front and back of the train, and stepped closer to look at the picture descriptions on each one.

Foldout beds, for people who needed to sleep on the train.

As neat as it was to see such helpful technology (honestly, Steve was beyond impressed by it all), he didn’t trust it. The Reality Stone was out there, and that meant that anything here could be an illusion, something to lull him into a false sense of security while the real world around him was destroyed.

Or he’d been thrown forward in time somehow. Those were the only two possibilities he could think of. It certainly felt similar to when he’d woken up from his icy slumber all those years ago, so his gut told him that he’d travelled to the future, somehow.

When it was his stop, Steve gathered up his bag and hurried from the train. He held his breath as he followed the crowd up the stairs to Stark Plaza. His whole body went tense as he shuffled up the stairs, as the warm air hit his face.

He inhaled deeply when he didn’t smell smog. And when he surfaced on the sidewalk, he was surrounded by more trees and greenery than he had ever seen in Manhattan. Steve stepped to the side, marveling at what appeared to be community gardens where had once been flowerbeds. The busy sidewalks were lined with grass, and all of the cars in the street were running silently, save one or two.

Stark Tower gleamed above, reflecting a gorgeous skyline. Of course, it was actually Avengers Tower now, but Steve never saw it that way, especially now that they had the compound.

He dimly wondered if the compound still existed.

As he approached the tower lobby, it occurred to him that Tony might be long gone, that Stark Industries was now run by one of his kids, or by someone else entirely. But something told him that wasn’t the case. He couldn’t explain it, but he just knew Tony was still around.

Or maybe that was just stubborn hope.

Steve rounded the building, ducking into an adjacent alley to the secret entrance. He pressed his palm to a crack in a crumbling brick wall, but nothing happened. He tried again.

Steve cleared his throat.

“Manual override. Steve Rogers.”

There was a whirring noise, and one of the bricks shimmered for a moment before turning into a small screen.

“Password required,” a woman’s voice said.

A holographic keyboard was projected, and Steve typed his password.

“Incorrect password.”

Steve frowned. He supposed that would make sense.

“Um.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Vocal recog—”

“Access granted. Welcome, Steve.”

The mirage of brick fell away, revealing a door. It looked different than Steve remembered, but he supposed that made sense too. He had no idea what was going on, but he was inside, and that was what mattered.

Steve adjusted his backpack, gripping the straps for some sort of reassurance as he walked along the familiar hallway that lead to the Avengers entrance with its own special elevator. The floor was smooth concrete, the walls a reflective metal. It could withstand bombings, alien attacks—pretty much anything the world could throw at it.

When Steve reached the end of the corridor, sliding doors opened with a small hiss. He peeked into the room, but it looked the same as he remembered. A few potted plants, some priceless artwork on the walls (all post-modern, not really Steve’s favorite), and cool lights washing the room in a pleasant blueish hue.

The elevator opened on the far side of the room, and Steve hurried inside.

“Mr. Stark has requested that you meet him on the 66th floor,” the same female voice announced. She didn’t sound like Friday.

“Um, yes. Yes, take me there.”

He had about a thousand questions, but he still wasn’t certain that this was real. He hadn’t seen anyone he recognized, and nothing was making sense. But the last time he’d had a panic attack, it had ended in a debilitating overload of history lessons, isolation, and forced attendance at a boxing gym.

Tony would know. Tony would be able to sort all of this out.

 

* * *

 

 

The elevator slowed to a stop, and the doors opened to reveal a room Steve had never seen before. To be fair, he didn’t think he had ever been on the 66th floor, but he was fairly certain there were no ballrooms in the tower he knew.

The floor was beautiful dark hardwood, lacquered and shining in the low, warm light. Windows made up most of the outer walls, and they had been dimmed and hued to create a sunset look. In the far corner was a bar—fashioned after the bars he’d grown up around. All wood bartop, open, welcoming. Leather-cushion barstools sat in a neat row, a contrast to the white, iridescent accent line that ran the length of the bar.

He paused for a moment when he noticed the old-fashioned, drooping lamps that hung overhead. They were cast iron, shaped like bulbous cages—and he had _seen_ them before.

Steve stepped toward it, trying to recall where exactly he’d seen them. It had to be during the war—he couldn’t imagine any place having any ugly lamps like that now.

“Steve.”

Steve froze mid-step, then whipped around to see a man standing there that his brain immediately recognized as Tony, but it…wasn’t.

“It’s me,” the man said earnestly. But this man had blue eyes, darker hair—yet his voice was Tony’s exactly. Not a single syllable or tone was off.

Steve took a step closer to the man where he stood against a wooden support beam. The room wasn’t finished. Leave it to Tony to only finish the part of the room people saw when they got out of the elevator.

“Who are you?” Steve asked warily.

The man smiled, and it was Tony’s smile. Except this guy was about twenty years younger than the real Tony Stark. Same facial hair, though.  “It’s me, Cap. It’s Tony.”

Steve’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not Tony.”

“Yes, I am,” Not-Tony replied gently. He nodded toward the ballroom floor. “You like it?”

“Is this some kind of joke? Where’s Tony?” Steve didn’t know why his body wasn’t reacting the way he was telling it to. This guy was clearly an imposter, and something seriously fucked-up was going on, but he felt locked in a haze. Shock, probably. He couldn’t muster anger or fear, just frustration.

“Steve, it’s okay,” Not-Tony said, putting his hands out as if to steady him. But Not-Tony didn’t touch. “There’s a lot I need to explain. I get that. But first I need you to get something to eat, something to drink, and rest a little. You’re going to get really tired in about an hour, and probably throw up a few times. You’ve never been good at holding anything down when you’re disoriented.”

Steve shook his head, taking a step back. “I need to talk to Tony. The real Tony. I’m not fucking around—where is he?”

Not-Tony frowned. He looked away for a moment, and brought a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose. The way Tony always did when he was trying to remain calm but was immensely stressed. Or frustrated, as Steve was betting in this case.

“He’s not here,” Not-Tony said after a moment, his voice soft. “I’ll explain everything, I promise. But you have to trust me when I say you need to have lunch and get some rest right now.”

“You won’t even tell me who you are,” Steve snapped. “How am I supposed to trust you?”

He couldn’t get over this guy’s face. He looked almost exactly like Tony, but with these jarring blue eyes that made Steve long for the real Tony. And he’d never realized how much he loved Tony’s crow’s feet and his smile lines until he was staring at a doppelganger who didn’t have any.

“How old are you?” Steve asked abruptly.

Not-Tony snorted, closing his eyes. “Thirty-two. Why, do I look older?”

“Way too young,” Steve muttered.

Not-Tony laughed, and it made Steve jump to hear such a familiar sound from someone he didn’t know at all. His chest twinged, and the worry in his gut started to gnaw there. He wanted to be back in his apartment, he wanted to call—

His phone.

Steve immediately dug around in his pocket and fished out his phone. He called Tony, but the call immediately failed. When he pulled his phone away from his ear, he noticed that he had no service or internet.

“That’s not going to work,” Not-Tony said in the same gentle tone. “I promise I’ll explain everything if you just rest first.”

“I’ve had—”

“Plenty of rest in your lifetime, I know,” Not-Tony finished with a sigh. “But look. It’ll be a lot easier on you if you just sleep first. There’s a lot your body is adjusting to that you aren’t even aware of.”

“Who are you?!?” Steve snapped. “Where’s Tony? Where are my friends? Tell me what’s going on first, then I’ll see about sleeping.”

Not-Tony shook his head. “Doesn’t work like that, Steve. My house, my rules. You have to sleep. I’ll even give you the penthouse to yourself.”

Steve bristled, lips curling to a snarl.  “The penthouse is not yours to give,” Steve grit out. Despite all of the warning signs to the contrary, Steve was disturbed to find that he didn’t feel any gripping worry. There was no sense of dread in his gut, like he usually felt when Tony was in any kind of danger--when anyone he cared about was in danger.

It was incredibly frustrating. It felt like his own mind was betraying him.

“Just tell me where Tony is,” Steve said quietly. Not-Tony didn’t seem to be displaying any physical evidence of trying to be threatening, but that didn’t mean Steve was going to trust him. “I need to know that he’s okay.”

Not-Tony opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. After a moment, he let out a sigh.

“He’s not here.”

“Explain,” Steve said flatly.

Not-Tony chewed his lip, looking out the windows at the city beyond. “Something happened to you not that long ago. You were somewhere familiar, and suddenly it wasn’t familiar anymore, right?”

Steve swallowed hard.

Not-Tony seemed to take that as an answer in itself. “I’m not going to explain any specifics until you’ve rested and gotten something to eat. But you travelled a long way in a short time. Kind of like when you were in the ice, except nobody here is trying to tell you it’s still 1945.”

Steve turned to look over at the bar again, to those ugly lamps.

Not-Tony snorted softly. “Okay, yes, those lamps are from 1945. They cost me a lot of money, too. From a cafe in Austria, the one you visited with Bucky Barnes and all of your buddies after Monte Cassino.”

Steve blinked, turning to Not-Tony again. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s not right. I was never at Monte Cassino. We got rerouted to Belgium on our way there.”

It was Not-Tony’s turn to look confused. But the expression wasn’t long on his face before it was replaced with a knowing calm. “Ah. My mistake. That was what I was told.”

“By who?”

Not-Tony hesitated a moment before answering. “Uh, Bucky.”

“You talk to Bucky?” Steve asked. “Where is he? How does he know you?”

Not-Tony shook his head again. “Steve, he’s not here. He knows me through the Avengers.”

Steve didn’t buy it. “Yeah? Prove it.”

There was a weighted pause as Not-Tony decided how to answer. “He killed Tony’s parents.”

“Anyone could know that who looked deep enough in HYDRA’s history. You’re crafty enough to get in here, I think you’re capable of doing something like that.”

“Fine,” Not-Tony said. “Ask me a question I could only know if I knew Bucky.”

Steve held his gaze, trying to decide what to ask. Bucky didn’t share much with anyone aside from Natasha, but he didn’t trust this man.

“What kind of medicine did Bucky accidentally give me on my seventeenth birthday?”

A little smile curled at Not-Tony’s lips. “Trick question, Cap. He _meant_ to give you apple cider vinegar, but you got balsamic instead.”

Steve’s cheeks colored. He’d been fairly certain only a few select people knew that story. Bucky only ever told it around trusted friends--people they were _both_ friends with. Wherever he was, Bucky had been here, and he had trusted this man enough to tell him a story like that.

“Tell me what’s going on so I can understand,” Steve pleaded. “I promise I’ll sleep if you just tell me.”

Not-Tony shook his head yet again. “That’s one rule I can’t break,” he said. “You need a clear head to hear what I have to say. If you aren’t rested, it will probably end  badly for everyone involved.”

“Is that a threat?” Steve growled.

Not-Tony rolled his eyes. “No, Steve.  I’m just saying that you have to be rested. You’re stressed, you’ve been through a lot.” Not-Tony moved from where he’d been leaning and headed for the bar. “You’re not required to stay here. But there’s plenty of room if you want somewhere familiar to sleep.”

Steve didn’t want to stay, but he wasn’t sure if his money would work here. He had no place to go anyway, except maybe back to his apartment. But something told him it wasn’t his apartment here, wherever this was.

“I want weapons,” Steve blurted.

Not-Tony nodded. Something close to sadness crossed his face, but it was gone before he spoke. “Sure. Armory is four floors up. Take your pick of whatever you want, just don’t kill anyone.”

Steve glared at him before heading to the elevator. He pressed the button to retrieve it and faced Not-Tony again, uncertain. Bucky trusted this man, so Steve had to be able trust him for one night. With weapons at the ready, just in case.

“You’ll tell me everything?” Steve asked.

“I promise,” Not-Tony agreed. “Everything.”

  



	2. Chapter 2

Upon investigating the armory, Steve selected a variety of handguns, a baton, and a taser to bring up to the room. His weapon selection was large enough that he had to stuff his backpack full, but Steve wasn’t going to be under prepared if something happened. 

He picked his favorite guest room closest to the penthouse. Though he was sure he had his own floor here, and the penthouse had been offered, he didn’t want the man he’d met to have planned ahead for that. So he chose his old favorite—from back in the days when his real room was under construction, and his first date with Tony Stark was years away.

They had gone to dinner at an Indian restaurant. Between samosas, naan, and lamb ragonjosh, they had gotten on the topic of beaches. As Tony said it, Steve had been to every beach that no one else considered a beach. The rocky cliffs of Greece and Italy, the gritty sand and grey water of Coney Island, and of course, Normandy. Steve hadn’t brought up the last one, but Tony had caught on anyway and changed the subject before it soured the mood. 

Steve could still taste the bitter notes of saffron on his tongue, and the way Tony’s nose had wrinkled when his first bite of chicken vindaloo nearly seared his tongue off (“Just has a kick at the beginning, that’s all.”)

He tried calling Tony several more times to no avail. He texted—he even emailed—but both were returned with error messages. Steve didn’t know why he expected any differently, but he refused to give up hope that Tony would find a way to reply. 

_ Please call me if you get this. I don’t know what’s going on or where I am. _

All he had to go on was the man he’s seen downstairs, and a promise he was forced to bank on. He really didn’t want to, but leaving meant he might not get the answers he needed in order to find Tony again. 

Steve tried Bucky, Sam, Natasha, and every other Avenger on his contact list, but all of his calls and texts failed.

After one last futile attempt to call the secret Avengers compound landline, he gave up. A pounding headache started to set in, and he decided to raid the fridge to get his blood sugar up. Three turkey and cheese sandwiches and two glasses of water later, he was exhausted, just like Not-Tony had said he would be. 

“What’s your name?” he asked the AI—at least, he hoped it was present here. 

“My name?” the female voice answered. “My name is Francine.”

Steve grunted as he shucked off his shoes and socks. “How’d you get that name?”

“Do you like it?,” the voice responded enthusiastically. “Originally I was named Security Asset Response Analyst: Home, but Mr. Stark changed my name a few years back when I received several upgrades.”

“So Tony made you?” Steve asked. “When? Do you know where he is?”

“I’m sorry, Captain Rogers. I’m afraid I’m not permitted to give any information about Mr. Stark’s whereabouts until after you’ve spoken to Mr. Stark.”

“That makes a lot of sense,” Steve muttered. “You mean that guy I was talking to in that ballroom place? That’s who you’re calling Mr. Stark?”

“Yes,” Francine replied. 

Steve sighed. “Well, thanks, I guess.” He moved over to the bed, deciding against removing any more clothing. For all he knew, he was going to get dragged off in the middle of the night. 

Francine had seen where he had put all of his weapons throughout the room, so the best he could hope for was that she miscalculated his response time in unloading a clip in an intruder. 

“You’re welcome. Anything I can do for you? I’ll make sure the windows are dimmed so you won’t be woken up by any pesky sunshine.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Steve said as he adjusted his pillow. “I only sleep for  four hours.”

“Four?” Francine asked. 

“Yeah. Serum, all that.”

“Interesting,” she replied. “Well, give me a shout if you need anything.”

Steve almost smiled, but didn’t. “Sure thing, Frid—Francine.”

The lights dimmed, and Steve adjusted his pillow one more time before lying down in bed, only pulling a sheet up to cover himself. He didn’t want to rest, but his body felt weighed down, his eyelids drooping. 

Steve fought sleep for a good ten minutes more, but then he succumbed to it, fitful though it was. Exhaustion pummeled dreams away, leaving him in deep, endless darkness that seemed to stretch forever. 

When he did wake, it was later than Steve had expected it to be. The sun was just beginning to sink behind the skyscrapers, turning the clouds pink and lavender. He sleepily made his way to the kitchen, momentarily forgetting that he wasn’t on the real guest floor, but some alternate version of it. He was quickly reminded, however, when he couldn’t recognize even one brand for any of the items in the fridge. 

Steve set about cooking eggs and toast, a relatively mindless task. He did feel more at ease, and his mind had released a weight and tension he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying. Maybe Not-Tony had been right. 

Once the eggs and toast were appropriately seasoned with salt and pepper and strawberry jam (respectively), Steve checked his phone another time. No new calls, no new texts. He tried not to think  about how Tony was probably worried by now, and feeling immensely guilty about their fight. Steve certainly was, but he would make it better when he returned. Whenever and however that would be. 

“Captain?” Francine asked as he took his first bite of food. “Mr. Stark is able to meet with you whenever you’re ready.”

Steve chewed and swallowed before responding. “Sure. Tell him to meet me here.”

He had a feeling this conversation would go better if he knew where all of the weapons were and Not-Tony didn’t. 

Steve had barely finished half of his meal when he heard the pleasant chime from the elevator that signaled he had a visitor. 

He watched carefully as Not-Tony approached. This time Not-Tony was wearing glasses that had the same shape as many of Tony’s usual sunglasses, but with clear lenses. Not-Tony moved almost hesitantly, as though he didn’t know the layout of the space, and Steve was fairly certain he saw his hands tremble as Not-Tony pulled out a StarkPad. 

“Breakfast for dinner?” Not-Tony finally said. 

Steve watched him still, taking a sip of instant coffee he’d made to make sure he was awake and ready for whatever this meeting might entail. 

“I think we can do without the small talk,” Steve began, setting his mug down on the table with a dull clack. “I want you to explain what happened yesterday, and where Tony is. Where my friends are. Then I want you to explain who you are. The truth this time, no games”

Not-Tony frowned, but he nodded. “Sure, yeah.” He leaned back in his chair, watching Steve apprehensively. “Do you have any theories? It might be easier to explain if you already have a train of thought about it.”

Steve’s eyes narrowed, but he spoke anyway. “I assume whatever happened occurred while I was heading down to the subway platform. Everything went black. I couldn’t see, tripped, and when I caught myself, I looked up and suddenly I was here.” He looked around the room briefly. “I thought maybe I’d been transported to the future. Everything looks more advanced here.”

Steve paused, but Not-Tony didn’t give any indication that he was going to clarify anything yet. 

“But then,” Steve continued, “I noticed that things are way too familiar for this to be a distant future. And you’re here—you look exactly like Tony in so many ways, but not quite. Francine is a lot like Friday, but not quite. Everything in the fridge: similar, but not quite. So I’m guessing I’m in some kind of alternate reality, someone is using the Reality Stone to alter my reality, or someone harnessed the Mind Stone from Vision somehow and is brainwashing me.”

That garnered a surprised look from Not-Tony. 

“Well, um, you’re pretty much right, actually,” Not-Tony said. “You were transported to an alternate dimension. As you can imagine, it’s a pretty difficult thing to do, which is probably why things are so similar here--I don’t think you jumped very many dimensions away from your own.” 

Not-Tony leaned forward in his chair, tapping on the screen of his glass tablet. “You may have heard the theory where there are alternate dimensions for every possible variable—everything is exactly the same, but one tree has a branch one inch off kilter, one centimeter, yadda yadda. I still don’t know if that’s true, but the way you jumped dimensions brought you here, where the roots are still the same as your dimension.”

Steve’s brow furrowed. “So how do I get back to my dimension?”

Not-Tony grinned. “Why, you wanna leave already?”

“Yes,” Steve replied tartly. “My friends are there.”

“Well, it’s not that simple,” Not-Tony said. “Getting you here is one thing, getting you back is another.”

“So you brought me here,” Steve growled. “You realize that’s kidnapping, right?”

Not-Tony laughed. “I guess that’s one way to put it, yeah. But it wasn’t intentional. That’s what I’m getting at: about two years ago I found a way to open up a portal to hop dimensions. But then it went haywire, and the portal closed. We thought it was over, until a portal opened up halfway across the world and dropped a dodgeball in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”

The tablet screen lit up, projecting a 3D map. Orange dots glowed in hundreds of locations around the globe.

“Each one of those indicates where a portal opened. Usually nothing happens, but sometimes things fall through. Sometimes  _ people  _ fall through.” Not-Tony shrugged. “I guess fate just picked you.”

Steve shook his head. “It can’t be random. There had to be some kind of pattern.”

Not-Tony frowned, swaying his head from side to side. “I’m sure there is one, but we haven’t found it yet,” Tony said. 

“Yet you didn’t seem surprised that I showed up here. And you knew who I was.”

“Well, yeah. You’re not the first Avenger to come through.”

Steve cocked a brow. “I’m not? Who else has come through, and what happened to them?”

Not Tony clicked off the tablet screen. “It’s complicated, Steve. Several Avengers have come through before you. And mutants, other super beings. All of them wanted to go home, so we tried to help as best we could.”

There was a heavy pause, and Steve didn’t move to break the silence. 

“We  _ think  _ we got some of them back,” Not-Tony said, “but we have no way of confirming. Others didn’t make it all the way through the portal, some died due to atmospheric imbalances compared to their home dimension, and some just…used it as a new start. I don’t even know if some of those people are people you might know, but I’ve promised to keep them a secret just in case.”

The confused look didn’t leave Steve’s face. “Wouldn’t I have noticed if someone vanished from the team in my dimension?”

Not-Tony shrugged. “Probably not. Obviously I don’t know how it all works, but with the properties used to create the portal in the first place, there’s a good chance inter-dimensional travel affects time differently. For all we know, ten years in this dimension could be half a second in yours.”

“Or twenty years,” Steve replied gravely. “I’ve seen Interstellar.”

Not-Tony’s eyebrows rose. “Interstellar? With Tom Cruise?”

Steve opened his mouth to reply, then shook his head. “No. Matthew McGorsky? McConnell? Something like that. Not the same.”

Silence settled between them again, and Steve turned away to look out the window. For the time being, he was stuck here until he could figure out a way home. Back to Tony, back to his friends and his little studio. He wanted the dingy subway air, the familiar walkways in the tower instead of every room here looking just different enough that it was unsettling.

“So you are Tony, then,” Steve murmured after a long moment, eyes still on the darkening sky. “The Tony of this dimension. “

“Yeah,” Not-Tony— _ Tony _ —answered softly. “I’m the Tony of this dimension.”

Steve’s chest pinched, overcome with a sense of loss. When he did come home, his Tony could be gone. His whole world could be gone. 

“You’re close with your Tony,” Tony said. 

“Yeah,” Steve replied distractedly. “He’s—we’re dating. It’s still new. Took him awhile to muster the courage.” A small smile crept to his lips. 

“Ah,” Tony replied knowingly. “I see.”

Steve turned back to look at him, tapping gently at the corner of his eye. “My Tony has brown eyes.”

“I used to,” Tony said with a chuckle.

“Used to?”

“Extremis,” Tony replied. “Do you have it in your dimension?”

“Yeah, before,” Steve said with a nod. “The wrong people had ahold of it, infected Pepper. You—er, my Tony—found a cure. Cured Pepper, destroyed everything about it.”

Tony gave an approving cluck of his tongue. “Interesting. I was infected with it, and it made me uncontrollable, so I created a cure. But there isn’t exactly a cure here. I could only take away so many of the effects. My aging is slowed, for example. Also lost the color in my irises, and I have some pretty nasty scars on my chest from my body trying to melt the reactor technology out of my chest cavity.”

Steve looked Tony over, matching up the similarities and differences. It was mind-numbing to try to name them all, and soon Steve just gave up trying to pinpoint each one. This really was Tony, yet it was not the man he knew. 

“So what are you going to do?” Tony asked after a moment, watching him carefully. 

Steve wasn’t sure how to answer. He sat there trying to process the information he’d been given. “I don’t know yet,” he admitted. “But I want to go home.”

Tony nodded. “Already working on it, Cap.”

It made him shiver to hear the nickname, so achingly familiar, but so clearly not the voice he wanted to be saying it. 

“Am I here?” Steve asked suddenly. “Is there an alternate me running around?”

Tony’s jaw went slack for a second, but he tried to recover quickly. “Uh, no. I mean—you were here, but—no.” Tony swallowed hard. “Um, I can tell you that story later, if you want to hear it. But you should probably get some temporary living arrangements or something first, right?”

Something in Tony’s eyes made Steve want to press, but he was almost too afraid of the answer. Maybe the version of him here had met the same fate, sucked away in Tony’s portal. He could see himself doing that. If his Tony promised him that the portal would work, he would be willing to trust him enough to make the first go. 

“Uh, right,” Steve decided to reply instead. “How long do you think it will take for you to get a portal working?”

Tony blinked. “Um. That’s a difficult question to answer. I can open a portal in two weeks, but getting you a portal to your exact dimension could take something like six months. If your entry point was particularly powerful, maybe three months.”

“Three months?” Steve didn’t know how he was going to swing that. 

“I mean, if you wanna take a one in infinity chance and go through a portal in two weeks, I guess you can do that,” Tony replied, deadpan. “You do realize we’re talking about hopping dimensions here, right?”

Steve sighed, leaning back in his chair. “Fine.” He looked out the window again. “I guess I’d like to stay here, if that’s okay. And I can help out if the Avengers here need it. I’d be happy to.”

Tony’s smile threatened to split his face. Steve didn’t think he’d seen a smile that big from Tony since their last date.  “That’d be amazing, Steve. We could really use your help, and you’re welcome to stay here in the meantime.”

Steve’s smile was weaker, but he did smile back. 

At least he could be put to use here.


	3. Chapter 3

As interested as Tony had been upon his arrival, the next three days were relatively quiet for Steve. He tried to make himself at home as much as he could in a temporary living space, but all he had were the contents of his backpack which really only included his wallet, keys, some paperwork, and a water bottle Tony had given him as a gag gift after they attended a Stark Industries college fair. 

Francine offered to print some of the photos off of his phone, and Steve was incredibly thankful for it. He hadn’t even thought about his photos from his dimension still being on his phone, and soon pictures of him and Tony littered just about every surface of the guest floor. Of course, there were plenty of other pictures: funny ones of him and Sam, Bucky posing begrudgingly with a stuffed Stitch at Disney World. There were so many little memories he’d forgotten about until he had looked through his entire photo library. 

He also printed a few screenshots of his favorite texts from Tony, just to keep him close. It worried him to think that Tony might think he’d left or run off, so reading texts from their best moments made him relax a little easier. 

The Tony from his current dimension didn’t visit very often. He checked in once a day, never really leaving the threshold for the elevator. He assured Steve that he was doing all he could to get him home, but he never lingered. He asked Steve if he needed anything and went along. 

Steve had only tentatively explored. He went to the grocery store on the second day with a credit card Francine had produced for him, and going out to use it had been enough to make his nerves fray. It felt as if he no longer knew the language of New York—navigating was just difficult enough that he became stressed before he even made it two blocks away. 

Even so, he got restless just hanging around the tower. The majority of the team was assigned in Seattle for some unusual earthquake activity, and the rest of them were upstate. Apparently no one really hung around the city anymore, which Steve supposed he understood. The city could be suffocating at times, even for a native. 

“I think I should meet them,” Steve told Tony when he arrived for his daily check-in. “Maybe head upstate and visit them.”

Tony leaned against the threshold, but as usual, he didn’t enter. “I think you should, but I think you should video chat first.” He gestured vaguely with his hand. “We…Once we had an Avenger show up, wanting to be part of the team. She knew everyone, but none of us had ever seen her. It made everything a lot harder on her.”

Steve frowned, but he didn’t let that knowledge deter him. “My best friend showed up after seventy years and tried to kill me. I think I can handle people not knowing who I am.”

Tony sighed. He looked tired; there was a hollowness to his eyes that Steve recognized. “I just think video chat would be easier on you at first. But sure. Okay. You can meet them if you want.”

Steve decided to think on it more, not wanting to push it. “Any more progress today?” he asked quietly.

Tony didn’t meet his eye. “A little. Takes a lot of work at the beginning before you get any progress. But I’ll get it done.”

“Look, Tony, I appreciate it,” Steve said. “But you don’t have to work yourself to death. I’m…I’m lucky to know someone who can fix this and get me home. I know I don’t have the right to be impatient.” He rubbed the back of his neck, uncomfortable. He never liked to see Tony working relentlessly on any project, foregoing sleep and food just to get work done.

Tony pinched the bridge of his nose, and then let his hand fall away. “It’s just been a long day. Trust me, I do have other things to work on aside from getting you home.” He offered a hint of a smirk. “But I appreciate the concern.”

Steve smiled a little. “And you know you’re allowed to come in, right? You don’t have to stay in the elevator. I mean, unless—I get it if you’re busy.”

Tony chuckled softly, but it was weak. “It’s okay. I just never…I think we kinda got off on the wrong foot. I didn’t want you to feel watched or crowded or anything.”

“I appreciate that,” Steve said with a nod. He stepped back, inviting Tony in with a wave of his hand. “Come on in. I’ve decorated a little. Pictures of my Tony—I hope that doesn’t freak you out.”

Tony didn’t enter right away, he just gauged Steve carefully, as though trying to find the joke. When he did step inside, it was hesitant. Steve was fascinated to see Tony act in such a way. He only knew Tony to feign boldness when he was nervous, not act as he truly felt. 

Tony found a photograph of Steve and his Tony, once that had been taken by Natasha at a team fire pit gathering at the compound. Steve had an arm around Tony’s waist, leaning against him, head resting together. Both of them were smiling softly, but their eyes were on the fire. 

Steve watched Tony’s eyes as he looked over the picture, and caught the way Tony’s lips pursed before he set the photo back down. 

“Cute.”

“I think so, yeah,” Steve said, beaming. “I have chocolate all over my face, but you can’t see it in the picture.”

But Tony had moved on, eyes wandering over the dozens of pictures. He didn’t pause long at each one, but Steve could tell that nothing was escaping that analytical gaze of his. 

“I see what you mean,” Tony murmured, lifting his finger to tap at the other Tony’s face. “He looks just like me. Everyone looks pretty much the same. Except her.”

Steve leaned closer to look over Tony’s shoulder. “Natasha?”

“Yeah.”  Tony shook his head slightly. “She’s…not a friendly here. I’ve never run into her, but she’s something else. She’s recorded more kills than any other special agent we have record of.”

Steve remembered the way Natasha spoke about her past, how slim her chances had been at making the right choice for her future. She never said much about what made her change, but in this dimension, whatever it had been hadn’t taken place here. 

“She’s a good friend of mine. She’s been through a lot, and keeps everyone together more than she knows. She’s one of my closest friends.”

Tony nodded distractedly. “And Bucky…he looks different in my dimension, but not much. Bigger dimple in his chin, boxier jaw. Really stony-looking, even when he’s happy.”

Steve laughed. “That’s what a lot of people say about—”

He cut himself off when he noticed Tony’s demeanor change. The hint of a smile had vanished from Tony’s lips, and his eyes went dead. Steve actually heard the little intake of breath that just barely made its way through Tony’s lips. 

“Tony?” Steve took a step toward him, reaching out and gently placing a hand on his arm. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Steve gave Tony’s arm a gentle squeeze, and that seemed to snap Tony from his stupor. He shot an elbow up, and Steve recoiled just in time to avoid getting hit. 

Tony turned wide-eyed. “Oh god—sorry—I—I have to go.”

“Tony, wait—”

Tony just shook his head, eyes still wide and his entire body tense. Steve recognized the look as a precursor to a panic attack, but he knew he had no place here in helping Tony through it. He really didn’t have a place in his own dimension either—he hadn’t earned that right. 

So Steve said nothing. He just watched helplessly as Tony fled to the elevator and left him there. 

“Does that happen a lot?” Steve asked Francine after a long silence. “What did I do?”

“It wasn’t anything you did,” Francine assured him. “He’ll be okay. He’s got routines and breathing exercises, and medications to help.”

Steve noted how Francine hadn’t answered his question. He bit his lip, then turned back toward the photos to try to identify what had made Tony so upset. 

“Can you let me know when he’s…in a place where I could see him?” Steve asked. “But, I mean, don’t tell him I want to come up.” Steve assumed Tony had gone to the penthouse, as that was where his Tony would go. The lab was reserved for long-term feelings avoidance, not sudden attacks. “I don’t want him to feel pressured, and I haven’t decided if I’m actually going up yet.” He figured the latter was going to be the real thing that stopped her from saying anything. 

“Sure thing, Captain,” Francine replied. 

Steve looked over the pictures, cataloguing each one. He wasn’t an idiot: the way Tony treated him made him think that the Steve Rogers in this dimension had met an awful end. But without knowing the circumstances, Steve couldn’t begin to place what could cause Tony to be upset. In the area Tony had been looking at there was a photo of him and Tony as a baseball game, grinning slyly under baseball caps and sunglasses. Another photo of Tony and Rhodey at a barbeque, Rhodey in mid-scold as Tony reached around him for a burger before it had been announced that it was time to eat. There was a picture of a small group of them: Steve, Tony, Sam. Bucky, Rhodey, and Natasha poolside, each drinking fruity cocktails (or mocktails as it had been in Steve and Tony’s case). A photo of Tony and Peter standing side by side, the fake internship photo Steve had taken of them when Peter needed proof for school.

There was one more, a photo of Steve, alone. Tony had taken it, way back before they had started dating. Tony had taken him upstate, long before they had a compound there. They’d just pulled off on the side of a winding road, and Tony had marched him into the woods at a section of the Appalachian Trail to an overlook that took his breath away.

The photo was of Steve, sitting on the edge of the overlook, feet hanging over the edge, eyes on the lake beyond. 

Maybe that one had gotten Tony upset. Steve wasn’t sure why, but he had a feeling that photo was the one that had done it. 

Steve moved into his living room to stand at the window, looking out into the city. He hated doing it, but his usual waiting method involved an intense workout and he didn’t exactly want to be sweating and smelly when he went up to the penthouse to find out what had happened to Tony.

So watching the city it was. 

By the time Francine announced that Tony was feeling a little more like himself, Steve had nearly picked the side of his thumb off, and he’d probably burned a hole in the window of the apartment building closest to the Tower, where a cat had definitely been sitting in the window but was now gone. 

“Thanks, Francine,” he said quietly. 

He watched a moment more before heading to the elevator and asking for the penthouse. Francine hesitated, but evidently had no protocol against it, so the elevator began to move, and within seconds there was a small chime and the doors opened. 

Tony was across the room with a mug of something steaming in his hand. When he saw Steve, he froze for a second. 

Steve immediately tensed on instinct, and the ambient noise in the room went quiet in Steve’s ears. 

Tony dropped the mug and bolted toward the kitchen at a full sprint. He was already in the next room by the time the ceramic hit the stone floor an shattered, spraying coffee in every direction. 

“Tony?” Steve immediately started after him, fearful that maybe Tony was going to hurt himself. He tore across the floor, wincing only slightly as he felt a piece of ceramic embed into his foot, and again when it sunk deeper with his next step. 

There was a crash as Tony threw a bulky espresso machine onto the floor in Steve’s path, but Steve was barely deterred as Tony started snatching picture frames from the countertop in full panic mode. He skittered into the hallway, and Steve heard another crash as a picture frame fell to the floor. 

“Tony, please!” Steve called after him, hurrying past the downed coffee machine and into the hall. 

There was a thud as Tony fell to his knees to collect more frames, and Steve noticed light reflecting off of broken glass all around Tony—no doubt underneath him too. 

“Stop,” Steve said gently, “It’s okay, Tony.”

A choked noise escaped Tony, and he clutched his haul of pictures closer to his chest, eyes glassy and leaking tears. “Go away, please,” Tony rasped. 

Steve shook his head, and moved down beside him, trying his best to avoid glass. “There’s broken glass everywhere. You’re going to hurt yourself. Here.” 

He reached for the broken frame that was face down  on the floor. 

The loud  _ thwap _ of Tony slapping his hand hit his ears before the sting of pain registered in his nervous system. 

“Don’t touch that,” Tony hissed. 

“I won’t look at the picture, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Steve assured him, keeping his voice soft. He didn’t move, watching what he could see of Tony’s face in the shaft of moonlight that illuminated the hallway. 

There was a minute nod, and Steve slowly reached out, lifting the picture frame from the floor and offering it to Tony. 

Tony’s hand shook hard enough that Steve could feel the vibration when Tony carefully took the frame from him. 

“I can wait in the living room,” Steve offered quietly. “I’m sorry—I’m not here to snoop or anything, I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Tony squeezed his eyes shut, hugging his collection of frames so tight to his body that Steve feared they would crack. The fresh tracks of tears down his cheeks glistened, and Steve decided he wasn’t going to let that happen. 

“Hey,” he murmured, reaching out again. His thumb touched Tony’s cheek and he flinched hard, grabbing up the pictures again. “It’s okay,” Steve tried to sooth. “Just trying to help.” 

Tony allowed him to thumb the tears from his cheeks, but Steve didn’t linger. 

Quiet settled over them, and Steve let it rest, just watching Tony.  He felt the blood trickling from his foot and the burning pain that accompanied it, but it was nothing serious. Tony was just staring at the floor, but Steve could see a war going on behind his eyes. Waiting it out was all he could do, and he hoped it was what was best for Tony. But clearly, Steve had been dead wrong about all of that so far. 

“Tony, I—”

“No,” Tony choked out, eyes still on the floor. “I just…” He shook his head hard. “I didn’t want to scare you. You—I didn’t want to tell you.”

“About what happened to your Steve?” he tried, voice soft.

Tony’s eyes closed, his lashes wet. “Yes. Yes, that.”

“Okay, so don’t tell me,” Steve said, offering a small smile. “I don’t need to know, Tony. I’ll be back in my dimension soon enough, and until then we can just…you don’t have to tell me.”

Tony shook his head. “You have to know if you want to meet the team. I can’t throw you in there blind.”

“Was it that picture of me that started this? Is that what made you so upset downstairs?” Steve asked. 

Tony shook his head again, closing his eyes again. He pulled his lower lip between his teeth, and let out a shaky breath before carefully pulling the broken frame from where it rested on his chest. 

“Francine,” Tony croaked. “Lights please.”

Francine didn’t reply, but warm light soon flooded the hallway.  When Steve took the frame from Tony’s hand, Tony wiped his eyes, and hugged the rest of the frames again, bowing his head.

Steve looked at him for a moment, unsure, then turned the picture frame around. 

The photo showed him—the Steve from this dimension who looked identical as far as Steve could see—and Tony beside him, sporting red sunglasses and a grin so full of joy and happiness that it made Steve’s heart ache.  They were clearly together, his—Steve’s—arm around Tony’s waist, leaning in so that his head was at Tony’s height.

And in Tony’s arms was a wide-eyed, chubby-cheeked toddler, clutching Tony’s shirt and shooting an uncertain gaze at the camera. One the table in front of them, a beautifully decorated sheet cake with little dinosaurs on top, and dino-themed letters that read: 

_ Happy Birthday Peter! Look who’s TWO! _


	4. Chapter 4

Steve could only see how happy everyone was. Of course, there was a twist in his gut that came with the sight, because he knew that something terrible had happened. His brow furrowed slightly, and he peered closer.

A ring. Tony had a wedding band on his finger, and Steve had to assume that Steve had one too, though his left hand was around Tony, at his back. He swallowed hard, unsure of what to say, what to ask. He didn’t want to make Tony retell a story that was bound to cause him pain, but…was Peter here? How old was he in this universe? How had he come into Tony and Steve’s life here?

Instead, he picked the glass pieces out of the frame, and carefully moved to his feet, wincing slightly where the piece of ceramic was still wedged there.

“Your foot,” Tony croaked, reaching out.

“It’s okay,” Steve assured him.

“It’s bleeding, Steve,” Tony shot back.

Steve couldn’t deny that. He could feel the steady stream of blood leaking from his foot. The smallest wounds always seemed to produce the most blood. He sighed. “Yeah. I should fix that, huh.”

Tony set down the stack of picture frames, but he flipped them. Steve caught sight of one; a younger, pudgier Peter with a gummy smile, clasping a baby toy.

“Be careful,” Steve warned, reaching out. “There’s glass all over by your feet.”

Tony unexpectedly grabbed his wrists, bracing against Steve as Francine illuminated glass shards in red with some kind of light. If a toddler had been running around this penthouse, Steve supposed security precautions for this kind of thing were probably in place. Probably too many, because between Tony and Steve, overprotective would be an understatement.

“Here,” Tony said, ducking under Steve’s arm on his left side. “Keep the bleeding foot up.”

Steve’s instinctual reaction was to argue against perfectly rational advice like that, but he kept his mouth shut. Tony needed a distraction, and so did Steve, quite frankly. So he leaned into Tony and they headed toward the closest bathroom.

Steve took a seat on the closed toilet, frowning as he noticed the intense trail of blood that had followed him into the room.  The soft _plocks_ of blood hitting the tile echoed as Tony headed back down the hall, returning with a metal band around his right palm.

“Hold still,” Tony murmured, gently gripping Steve’s heel with his left hand. He held his banded palm a few inches from Steve’s foot.

Steve sucked in a quick breath, trying to prepare for whatever was going to happen.

A sticky fiber shot from the band and retracted, pulled the ceramic from Steve’s foot. Steve flinched involuntarily, letting out a hiss as more blood trickled onto the floor. Tony tapped the band and a cloud of white sprayed from the band, coating Steve’s foot.

“You know I can’t get infections, right?” Steve chuckled.

Tony smiled a little. “It’s been a little while. And besides, I’m just supposed to assume a Steve from an alternate dimension can’t get infections either?”

Tony thumbed the band again, and nanoparticles shot from it, quickly closing the wound. Steve shivered at the cold of the millions of tiny particles working in his wound, but he’d been healed this way before. Though he had to say this dimensions version was much less painful.

“So you were married?” Steve asked quietly, gingerly flexing his foot.

Tony didn’t respond right away. “Yeah, we were.”

Steve nodded. “Where’s your ring?”

Tony stood, pulling a towel from beside the sink to start cleaning up the blood. “Took it off.”

Steve waited for him to elaborate, but when Tony didn’t, he decided not to press. Clearly this wasn’t going to be an easy topic to bring up, even if Tony seemed to want to tell him about it. Steve could understand that; he never wanted to speak to anyone about Bucky falling off the train either.

“Are you good?” Steve asked instead. “You didn’t get any glass in your feet?”

“No,” Tony replied. “I’m fine.”

He looked like he was about to say something else, but then he continued cleaning up the blood.

“I’ll have the cleaning bots handle the hallway, sir,” Francine said. “Out of sight.”

When Steve shot Tony a confused look, he clarified. “Cleaning bots were always around when we were all here. Hard not to associate them with a houw full of people who aren’t here anymore.” Tony stood and offered Steve a hand. “Should be good to stand on it now.”

Steve took Tony’s hand and stood, carefully putting weight on his foot. It stung a little, but the nanoparticles quickly adjusted inside the wound. He started to follow Tony out, but paused in the doorway.

“Do you want to take more pictures down?” Steve asked.

Tony turned to face him again, unsure. “Um. Yeah. Yes.” He sighed, closing his eyes. “Sorry, Steve.”

“Don’t be,” Steve said, shaking his head. “I barged in. Do what you need to do to be comfortable. I’ll wait in here.”

Tony’s eyes were glassy again, and he shook his head. “How about I call you up once I’m done?”

What choice did he have but to agree? Steve nodded slowly. “Okay. But if you need me, just call.”

Tony wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Yeah. I’ll do that.”

Steve frowned, stepping forward to rest a hand on Tony’s arm. “I meant what I said earlier though, you don’t have to tell me.”

The hallway was so quiet. Steve—who hadn’t spent all that much time in the penthouse even in his own dimension—could feel the cavernous silence. It seemed to swallow them in the stone and glass, the sleek, modern edges that had been meticulously designed.  The whole place seemed cold, washing in bluish grey light that only echoed loneliness.

It didn’t feel like a place that a little kid would be toddling around, or a place two husbands would return to and call home.

Steve carefully made his way through the kitchen , around the espresso machine and through the spot where the shattered ceramic had been but was now gone. Even the coffee platters had been removed from the wood and walls. Tony watched him from the shadows of the bar, right where he’d been standing when Steve arrived.

He gave Tony a small smile and an equally small wave from the elevator before the doors closed. The elevator started downward, and Steve’s heart went with it, sparking a dull, throbbing pain in his chest.

That little baby. Steve couldn’t get that cheery smile out of his head, those round, chubby cheeks. A part of him felt like he’d been there that day, like somehow he was connected to the Steve that had lived here, and he had been the one standing beside Tony at that table on their son’s second birthday.

Steve decided he wanted to know. He would respect Tony’s privacy if it came down to it, but he did want to know what had happened to the family in those pictures. If Tony wouldn’t tell him, he was sure someone on the team would. If he ever met them.

When he reached his floor, Steve changed into sleeping clothes (he didn’t think it was a coincidence that all of the clothes that had been provided for him fit exactly right) and crawled into bed to read through the day’s news. Though he didn’t plan on staying in this dimension for long, keeping up to date would be helpful if the Avengers ever needed his help on a mission.

He was getting used to his little bedroom. It wasn’t actually that little, for starters, but having a queen bed instead of a king in Stark Tower qualified as little. He liked that he actually had some wall space instead of just windows along the outer edge of the room, and he’d taped his favorite pictures of Tony there, including a photo of the charcoal drawing he’d given Tony for Christmas that year. The walls were also a nice pastel blue, homey, yet it fit in with the modern design. The dresser was white, sleek and modern with drawers that looked like they might contain advanced technology rather than shirts and socks. Steve was getting used to it.

An hour ticked by, with Steve watching the holographic clock inside the mirror over his dresser. Tony still hadn’t called or sent any messages through Francine. Francine herself had been silent.

The news became harder and harder to read the later it became. Another half an hour dragged on, and by the time it had hit the two-hour mark, Steve clicked off his Starkpad and let out an impatient sigh. Even still, he didn’t ask Francine where Tony was.

Instead, Steve padded into his bathroom to start his nightly routine. He brushed his teeth (though he never got cavities) and flossed (equally unnecessary) before washing his face and patting it dry with a hand towel.

“Steve?”

“Jesus,” Steve hissed as he startled. He tossed down the towel onto the counter and hurried back into the bedroom to find Tony standing in the doorway, clutching a small picture frame in his hand.

Steve noticed Tony was in his pajamas too—silk pants and a loose t-shirt.

“My turn to scare you,” Tony said lightly, trying to joke.

“I guess so,” Steve chuckled. “So. How can I help?”

“You’re allowed to tell me to fuck off, for starters,” Tony began. His index finger tapped lightly on the frame. “And I did mean to come down earlier, I just…”

“It’s fine,” Steve said gently. “You didn’t have to come at all, unless you wanted to.”

Tony looked at the floor, and Steve could see that his eyes were still a bit glassy. “Yeah, well…” He swallowed, looking around the room, everywhere but at Steve. “Could I sleep in here?”

Steve blinked, mouth dropping open slightly. “Um-I mean, yeah, sure, it’s your house. I’ll just—”

“With you.” Tony’s cheeks went pink, but he at least met Steve’s eyes.

Now Steve really didn’t know what to say. He just stood there, searching for an answer.

“I know that’s weird,” Tony added hurriedly. “I know. But, um—the story about my Steve? I’ve only retold it once before, and Rhodey told everyone else so I didn’t have to. And I thought it’d be easier to tell you because you’re him, but…” He licked his lips, shaking his head. “I don’t think I’ll make it through.”

Steve immediately thought of Bucky. He’d told the story of losing Bucky right after it happened, to the Howlers, to his CO, in his writeup to the brass. Over and over he’d relived that story, told it until his jaw hurt from holding back his sobs.

“I get that,” Steve said carefully. “But how is sleeping next to me going to change that? I’m not him, Tony. I’m not.”

“And I’m not him,” Tony replied. “I dunno about you, but I’d take a ‘sorta’ him over an empty bed without him.”

Steve cleared his throat. “See, um. Tony and I don’t sleep in the same bed. I live in Brooklyn, he lives at the tower. I mean we have, before—but nothing like that. Just. Just sleeping.”

“Oh.” Tony’s face fell. “Right. That makes sense.”

Steve frowned. He tried to think of what Tony might do if the situation were reversed.

It didn’t take much thinking. Tony would absolutely comfort the Steve from an alternate dimension. No hesitation. One look at a suffering Steve, and Tony would melt.

Jeeze. Maybe Steve was a worse boyfriend than he’d realized.

“You know what? Stay.” Steve motioned toward the bed. “I’m not him and I never will be, but if I can give you some sort of comfort, I will.”

Tony didn’t perk up right away. “You don’t have to. You’re allowed to say I’m being a total creep.”

Steve smiled. “You’re being a little bit of a creep, maybe.”

A fraction of a smile tugged at Tony’s lips.

“C’mon,” Steve said, nodding toward the bed. “I don’t think it really counts as cheating if I sleep next to my boyfriend’s dimensional counterpart.”

“I don’t think sleeping next to someone counts as cheating at all,” Tony said distractedly, moving toward the bed to the side where the covers were undisturbed.

“That’s fair,” Steve said with a shrug. “I guess you’re right.”

He returned to his side of the bed and climbed under the covers. Despite his reputation as a prude in the media, Steve had lived through the largest war in history. Filthy conditions, human beings dying of any cause imaginable, vicious cold, scorching heat. He’d been in brothels, scummy bars, and other places where sex in public was as common as talk of war. He’d seen the very worst of humanity, and the ways men and women came to terms with that.

Very little could faze him now. Certainly not physical intimacy or sleeping next to strangers. Hell, he’d slept naked in the woods with soldiers he didn’t know  to escape the heat.

“What’s the picture?” Steve asked, nodding toward the frame.

“Oh.” Tony flipped it around to reveal a picture of him—of Tony’s Steve—beaming from where he sat on a large rock in the middle of a creek. He looked…younger. His eyes were bright, his cheeks flushed, and he seemed relaxed in a way Steve couldn’t place. There was something familiar about the way the other Steve’s pants were rolled up above his ankles, the way his sleeves rolled up past his elbows as he held a smooth rock in his hands.

“Where were you?” Steve asked.

“Vacation in the Smokies,” Tony murmured as he leaned over to place the photo on the bedside table. “We took a month off every year when we first got married. Until Peter came along.”

“That sounds nice.”

Tony smiled. “It was. Gave us a chance to be ourselves. We never got to be that way here.” He gestured toward the city outside. “There’s always someone watching. Always a chance that someone will need us and come barging in. Not there.”

Steve didn’t think he’d ever be able to give up a whole month of the year for vacation. He couldn’t imagine Tony agreeing to that either—and that was if they ever made it to a point where they could get married. They hadn’t even been dating six months and they were already fighting. Work was just too important, too necessary.

“How did you manage that?” Steve asked. “What about the Avengers? All of the things you’re always working on in the lab?”

Tony shrugged, his gaze going distant. “We worried about that for awhile. Fought about it, talked about it. But then we decided that we wanted happiness, we wanted love in our marriage, and we wanted a family, and we couldn’t have those things if we made work the priority all the time.”

Tony read the shock on Steve’s face and chuckled. “You’ll get there. There’s a lot you’ll both have to work through. But you love him, right?”

Oh god. Steve probably grimaced at least a little bit, and his cheeks went red. He really liked his Tony, he did. But marriage? A family? He could never imagine the two of them having those kinds of conversations. Dating was difficult enough, and Steve didn’t really think his feelings could be described as being in love. Sure, he loved Tony, but he didn’t know for sure if he was _in love_ , which most likely meant he wasn’t.

“I don’t know,” he finally answered, looking down at his hands. “We’ve been dating a few months and it seems like it’s in a tailspin. We fight all the time when we’re together.”

“Any big fights?” Tony asked slowly. “Outside of your relationship.  Any—”

“The Accords, you mean,” Steve muttered. “Our ‘civil war’ between Avengers. Yeah. We got through that. Almost three years ago now. I just moved back to New York in the last year.”

Tony nodded once. There was a little pause, and he nodded again. “Right. Got through it.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean it like that—”

“No, it’s okay,” Tony said gently. “You did get through it. I’m sure it was terrible for you. It was terrible for us too, and let me tell you, there are few things worse than finding out your husband has been keeping a secret from you for years.”

Steve faltered. He regretted the way Tony had come to find out about his parents’ deaths, but he still didn’t regret allowing him those years of peaceful ignorance. Telling Tony would have destroyed so much in him…but of course, it ended up destroying those parts anyway.

“I know I don’t have the authority to speak for him, since things in your dimension are different,” Tony said softly. “But if he still chose you after all of that and you weren’t even together…he cares about you more than you know.”

Steve looked down at his hands were they had curled into the comforter. “I’m sorry.” He didn’t really know what he was apologizing for, but the words felt right.

“You said it took him awhile to find the courage,” Tony murmured. He shook his head. “It wasn’t about finding courage. It was about deciding whether or not he could stand to live with himself if he chose to be with the man who withheld something so awful.”

“Tony—”

“Listen to me.” Tony reached over, folding his hand over Steve’s. Steve reluctantly met his eye. “Fighting is easy. It’s always easy to find something wrong. And he’ll probably do it a lot—God knows I did. And it’s not right, but it’s temporary.”

Tony let go of Steve’s hand. “Because it hurts,” he sighed. “Sometimes I’d just see his name on my phone and be angry because I couldn’t see how we went through everything together and he’d never told me. I’ll never agree with his decision, but I learned that there are more important things to focus on. And I’d relive that moment a million times if it meant he came back.”

Steve felt like an absolute dick, but his conscience was quick to remind him that Tony could get pretty nasty when he started a fight with Steve. Thinking back now, he’d just retaliated, even in moments where he should have questioned why Tony was starting a fight out of the blue.

“You should rest,” Steve said after a moment. “It’s been a long day.”

“More like a long night,” Tony mumbled, but he wasn’t being mean.

Steve settled in under the covers, but his heart ached. Maybe he really had been insensitive with Tony. Two years had felt like plenty of time for Tony to come to terms with what had happened, but then again if Tony had known some kind of truth about how Bucky had died and withheld it…that wouldn’t be anything close to enough time. Enough time to get over the anger, sure, but not the pain.

Tony tapped his watch and the lights went out but for the soft blue glow of the skyscrapers outside.

“Goodnight,” Tony said quietly, and it broke Steve’s heart. When was the last time Tony had been able to say that to someone?

His Tony would never just lie there staring at the ceiling while any version of Steve lay there suffering beside him.

Steve rolled onto his side to face Tony, carefully reaching out to smooth a hand over Tony’s shoulder. Tony flinched, but relaxed almost immediately.

“You really don’t have to spoon me,” Tony muttered, his voice muffled in his pillow.

“Would if make you feel better?” Steve asked, not yet removing his hand. “Because if it’d help you feel better, I really don’t mind. Seriously. I know my Tony would do it for your Steve if things were reversed.”

Tony didn’t reply. But he did roll over to face Steve, propping himself up on an elbow.

“If I could just…listen to your heartbeat. I could—that’d mean the world to me.”

Steve moved onto his back and nodded. “Go ahead. I don’t mind.”

Tony moved slowly, watching Steve’s face for any sign of hesitation. Steve didn’t offer any. He would want to hear Tony’s heartbeat too, if he’d lost his husband. So he let Tony rest his head against his chest and it was strange to feel such a familiar weight and shape. Tony even nuzzled in the way his Tony had done when they fell asleep on the couch together watching a movie.

It wasn’t long before he felt something wet against his shirt, but Steve didn’t say anything. He just curled an arm around Tony’s back, thumbing between his shoulder blades. Saving Tony from one night of loneliness was worth it for Steve—like maybe it would make up for the way he’d been treating his Tony back home.

“Goodnight, Tony,” he whispered.

He pretended not to feel the way Tony’s body shook with a single, silent sob.  



	5. Chapter 5

Steve woke up to grey light seeping in the windows, washing the room in a familiar dull haze. He could hear rain faintly hitting the glass, and as he sat up there was a low rumble of thunder that greeted him. 

Tony wasn’t there. Steve didn’t find himself surprised by that, and he figured Tony had left some time ago based on the fact that he couldn’t really feel where Tony had been resting against him. 

A distant clatter of dishes announced that Tony was still on the floor, though. 

Steve yawned, unexpectedly tired and a little sore from sleeping so stiffly. Usually he moved around quite a bit in his sleep, but Tony had been hugged so tight to him that he hadn’t really been able to shift at all. So he worked out some kinks in his neck and stretched a little before shuffling into his kitchen. 

Tony was hard at work there, with eggs, bacon, and vegetables all cooking in three separate pans. Steve had never seen Tony cook anything beyond toast and coffee, and he wasn’t sure the Tony in his dimension even knew where to find the bacon in the fridge. 

“Morning,” Steve greeted, voice thick with sleep. 

Tony briefly looked up before returning to chopping up more vegetables. “Morning.”

“Can I help?” Steve wasn’t one to sit around and be waited on. 

“I’ve got it,” Tony said distractedly, dicing some tomatoes with impressive skill. “Go freshen up. We’re going on a field trip.”

Steve cocked a brow. “A field trip? Where to?”

“Secret,” Tony clucked, expertly sliding all of the tomato pieces onto his knife to dump them into a bowl beside him. “Bring a jacket, it might be chilly.”

Steve hesitated for only a moment before heading back into the bedroom to get ready. He closed the door behind him, but didn’t lock it before he headed to the shower to clean himself up. 

Once under the hot spray, Steve found himself wondering once again what had happened to the Steve here.  The Rhodey here knew, but Steve wasn’t sure he had been told the full truth about what happened. The way Tony was so adverse to telling it made Steve wonder if Tony was even going to tell  _ him  _ the full truth. Obviously digging up a traumatic story was difficult, but something didn’t feel right to him, and it really hadn’t hit him until that moment. 

Shaving didn’t take long once he was out of the shower, and Steve found a nice shirt and jeans to wear out on their field trip. He readied his backpack with a full water bottle, a sketchbook, and a small pistol, just in case. He just wasn’t sure if he was worried about Tony or another threat. 

When he emerged from the bedroom again, Tony had a steaming plate of omelets waiting for him, still sizzling. Tony sat at his table, chewing on a bite of his own omelet as he sifted through something on his StarkPad. 

“Thanks for making breakfast,” Steve said, slipping into the seat beside him. “Wasn’t really expecting that.”

“It’s the decent thing to do after you sleep with someone.”

Steve choked on a piece of egg, and Tony laughed softly. 

“Really, Steve. I haven’t made breakfast for someone in a long time. I kind of missed it.”

Steve’s lips curled into a small smile. “Did you cook a lot for them?”

“Oh yeah,” Tony chuckled. “Breakfast is my specialty. Yo— _ Steve  _ was always out on his morning run when Peter woke up, so I always made him breakfast, and then I always had something for Steve when he came back. We made it a point to always have breakfast together as a family. Once the day gets started…you know the drill. You never know if everyone will be able to make dinner or not.” Tony shrugged, taking another bite of omelet.

“How old was Peter?” Steve asked carefully, looking down at his plate. 

Tony didn’t answer right away. “Uh, five. Just turned five.” His fork tapped on the ceramic of his plate in a steady staccato.

Steve left it. “Man, he musta been spoiled. Haven’t had food like this at home since…well, maybe ever. I don’t cook a lot.”

“My Steve didn’t either in the beginning,” Tony said, his voice noticeably even. “But he kinda became the dinner guy. I was usually in the lab until late, so he’d make dinner for Peter.”

“Who watched him when you were both busy?”

“A lot of people, actually. He was kind of like the team kid. I mean, he went to stay with Clint and his family if it was something long-term, but everyone loved being babysitter.” He paused. “Except Bucky.”

Steve frowned. “He didn’t want to?”

Tony studied his fork. “I wouldn’t let him.”

“Not even with someone else there?”

Tony shook his head. “No.”

As much as Steve wanted to argue, it didn’t matter now. 

“We didn’t have a babysitter very often. Steve and I worked out ways to always have one of us there, or he came with us to work. It was difficult, but before we even decided to have him, it was very clear we weren’t going to have our kid be raised by nannies.”

“Have him,” Steve repeated. “What do you mean? I thought you adopted him.”

Tony shot him a look. “You mean men can’t have babies in your dimension?”

He was pretty sure his jaw his the table as he floundered for a response.

“I’m kidding,” Tony laughed. “We used a surrogate. My sperm, though I wanted yours.” He cleared his throat and corrected himself: “Steve’s.”

“Was it because of—”

“The serum, yeah,” Tony replied. “Didn’t want to risk any complications.”

It was a little terrifying to think of all of the conversations—the  _ years  _ of conversations that Tony had had with his Steve. As a couple, they seemed lightyears ahead of the ill-formed, immature something-like-a-real-relationship that he had going on with his Tony. 

“Your Steve seems way more grown up than I am,” Steve murmured around a bite of omelet. “I haven’t even thought about any of that stuff.”

Like the serum affecting his offspring. Steve hadn’t even considered having any kids, not after Peggy. And even then, they’d been some distant semblance of something—like a dream. 

“I dunno. You seem pretty similar to me,” Tony said. “You have to remember that Steve and I were married for a long time. We’d been married a few years before kids came into the equation.”

“Well, if you’re what my Tony will become someday, I’m very impressed.” That didn’t sound good. “I mean, I’m proud.”

Tony chuckled. “It’s okay. I’d be impressed too, if I had seen me now when I was that young.” He cocked his head slightly. “You’re both young. I hope you know that.”

Steve smiled, even though he didn’t really believe it.  Steve had seen the passing of almost a century, and he’d packed on plenty of lifetime’s worth of adventure in just the past six years alone. “Doesn’t feel like that.”

“Of course it doesn’t. That’s why eighteen year-olds think they run the world.”

They talked more about the world as they continued eating. As Steve had previously discovered, a lot of things in history were very similar to his own, but some of the locations or dates had changed. D-Day, for example, hadn’t occurred on June 6 th , but a day prior. More men died, as Erwin Rommel had still been present  in Normandy. Steve spent several minutes poring over Tony’s StarkPad, reading facts in this dimension that were only “what-ifs” in his own. It was hard to stomach, but Tony quietly assured him that it was all in the past, and that his Steve had been there and saved hundreds of lives.

“I shouldn’t have brought that stuff up,” Tony said. “It won’t be relevant to you in a few months.”

“No, no. It’s….fascinating. I mean, horrible, but we always wondered what would have happened if things were a bit different.”

Tony reached across the table, gently touching his hand. Steve turned his palm, lacing their fingers together. The look on Tony’s face made him realize what he’d done, and Steve’s cheeks went pink. 

“Sorry, I wasn’t—”

Tony smiled, removing his hand. “It’s fine, Cap. Just wanted to make sure you knew what you were doing.” He stood, collecting his and Steve’s empty plates. “Let’s get moving. I cleared my schedule for the day, and there are a lot of people you need to meet and places we need to go.”

Steve bit his lip and nodded. Grabbing Tony’s hand in public was second nature to him, and it was all he could hope for to not do so today in front of cameras and people on the street. Speaking of which…

“Should I wear a disguise or something?” Steve asked. “Since I look so much like him.”

Tony set the dishes in the sink, thinking. “Hm. Probably would be a good idea. I have some clothes you could wear. People are definitely going to think we’re together, though. I haven’t left the house with a stranger in a long time.”

“That’s okay,” Steve chuckled. “The media is still obsessed with Tony and me. I know how to handle them.”

 

 

Twenty minutes later, Steve was wearing an all-too-familiar pair of aviators, a Stark Industries baseball cap, and a roomy hoodie. They hopped into one of Tony’s Audi R8’s and soon they were emerging onto the street. A few photographers were there, but in the few minutes it took them to get to the first stop light, they were soon swarmed once people noticed Tony was with someone. 

“Tint the windows, would you, Francine?” Tony asked, a little smirk on his face as he waved to a few of the photographers. 

Steve watched as the windows turned a bit darker, but on the outside it seemed that photographers could no longer make them out. 

“Why didn’t you do that in the first place?” Steve asked. 

Tony grinned. “Give ‘em a little fun. I don’t get out much.”

Steve rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. 

As they drove, Tony explained why cars were so quiet here. Unlike in Steve’s dimension, climate change had been made into a big issue once Stark Industries started making a killing on renewable energy. Clean cars had taken off much faster, and much of Tony’s time at work was spent in the environmental sector. Steve had apparently been a big part of it too—finding initiatives and organizations to support, heading crews to help clean up the city more. 

“We basically had a chokehold on the local government,” Tony chuckled. “Steve could do no wrong. He was the best politician who wasn’t a politician.”

He pointed to the closest building. “Now it’s required in New York to have sustainable roofing—grass, moss, whatever organisms you want.  That was Steve. We have industrial, eco-friendly air filters that Steve and I funded all over the city. Compost programs, clean energy programs. New York has become the blueprint for everything.”

“I did all of that?” Steve craned his head to try to see the rooftops. Of course, he’d seen all of the green from his room, but he hadn’t known that his counterpart had put all of that there. 

“Yep. And the subway? That was your project.” Tony’s eyes went distant, but his smile remained. “You wanted it to be a safe place for people.”

“I saw the sleeping pads for the homeless,” Steve said.

“Yeah. And at night there are whole cars that are converted to sleeping areas. There are public restrooms and showers at a lot of stops and couple of times a month there are medical clinics set up for people to get the care they need down there. Not to mention transportation is free since the trains all run on renewable energy.”

“Then where does the tax money go?”

“Paying staff,” Tony said. “There’s a lot of cleaning involved, but we’ve hit a really good balance in the last year. It’s really making a difference.”

Steve heard the silent  _ I wish Steve could have seen it  _ in Tony’s voice.  Steve himself felt pretty shitty about all of it, considering his idea of giving back had been to attend a few functions, meet sick kids, and attend a few charity galas with Tony. Tackling a trifecta like sustainability, homelessness, and public transportation? He wouldn’t even know where to start. 

As they left the city (Steve assumed they were headed toward the compound), he noticed that traffic had been spectacularly light. 

“Biking initiatives,” Tony explained. “We have four-lane bike highways, tax incentives, and heavy taxes on cars that aren’t used for work. With free public transportation, we’re finding a happy equilibrium.  It’s taken a lot of time, but it’s coming together nicely.”

“All because of Steve?”

Tony nodded, then shrugged. “I mean, I helped.”

Steve’s mind was still on everything that had changed. New York had turned into a pinnacle of sustainability, a blueprint, and the New York he knew seemed centuries from that kind of progress. Fighting in the public sector had never been something he had been interested in—it was all too reminiscent of his days as a glorified mascot for the Army.  Of course he’d taken a stand, defended others, and fought for what was right, but not through policy and lawmaking. 

He began to notice familiar landmarks, curves in the road, and he knew they were headed to the compound. Packing a pistol in his backpack seemed silly now as he listened to Tony tell stories and jokes, smiling wide, his blue eyes twinkling. Last night seemed to have done him wonders, and Steve was glad to have helped. He would do it again if asked, because sleeping with this Tony was much better than sleeping alone. 

The trees parted, revealing the compound in all of its glory. Sleek, modern, and expertly designed, Steve was happy to see that not much had changed here. Of course, he caught the green outline on the roof of the eco-friendly roofing covers that Tony had talked about, so Steve’s legacy touched here too. 

They pulled into the garage (though it was actually a hangar for a few pieces of aircraft too) and Tony gave a contented sigh once they parked. 

“Home sweet home.” He turned, smiling fondly at Steve, who smiled back. 

Settling his backpack on his shoulders, Steve followed Tony toward the common room, eager to see who was around. He wanted to see what Bucky was like in this dimension, what Sam was like. He wanted to see everyone—though he was sorry he wouldn’t be seeing Natasha. 

“Is it going to freak them out to see me?” Steve asked, hurrying to keep up with Tony’s quick strides.

“Just give them some time,” Tony said with a shrug. “It’ll be an adjustment for—”

A man stepped into the hallway. Rhodey—though he had a bulk to him that Steve wasn’t used to seeing. 

Tony looked just as surprised as Steve did, and a sudden tension snapped in the air, almost as if Rhodey was supposed to be considered a threat. 

“Tony?” Steve asked, looking between the two. “Is something—”

Tony cut him off with a little hiss. 

Rhodey just kept staring at him. The longer he did so, the more Steve could see the anger rising in his eyes, incurring a storm there. Steve immediately tried to think of what he might have done that would cause Rhodey to look at him like that. 

Rhodey’s lips curled to a snarl. “Tony—”

“Rhodey, let’s not get hasty here,” Tony said, putting out a hand to calm his friend. “You have to hear me out—”

“Fuck no,” Rhodey snapped, jabbing a finger toward Steve. His voice cracked, sounding strangely pained and broken. When he spoke again, it was in a shaking whisper: “What the hell did you do?”


	6. Chapter 6

Tony didn’t seem to be able to come up with an answer to Rhodey’s question, and Rhodey just  _ stared _ . Steve had rarely been on the receiving end of a glare from Rhodey, and even now he knew the look wasn’t actually directed toward him, but it sent a chill down his spine all the same. He could not place the look in Rhodey’s eyes, couldn’t decide if there was anger or devastation there.  

After another moment of impossibly tense silence, Steve cleared his throat. 

“I’m not him,” Steve began quietly.

“I know,” Rhodey grit out, but Steve noticed that he relaxed a fraction. 

“I’m from another dimension. I, uh came through one of the portals that opened up.” 

Rhodey closed his eyes briefly, and swallowed hard. “Tony—”

“I need a minute with him,” Tony interrupted, stepping forward. His eyes were level on Rhodey. “Rhodes, you gotta hear me out on this one.”

“Dammit, Tony,” Rhodey hissed, bringing up a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. The grey light that reflected off of the sleek metal walls of the hallways threw strange lines onto Rhodey’s face as he stepped back. 

Tony turned to Steve, digging through his pockets to produce a metal fob. “Facial recognition should work on you, but if it doesn’t, use this,” he said hurriedly, his mind clearly far away from here. “Go to the kitchen and get something to eat, or look around. Just try not to freak anyone else out.”

If that was meant to be a joke, it fell flat as Steve took the fob from Tony’s palm. “I thought we were talking?”

Tony blinked. “Oh, no. Sorry—I meant Rhodey. I’ll, uh, I’ll catch up, won’t be long.”

Steve could see something like fear behind Tony’s eyes, and it made his stomach twist. “Is everything okay?” Steve found himself asking, concerned. 

Tony only briefly met his eye. “Yeah, it’s fine. Just—I didn’t think Rhodey would be here. We’ve had some issues in the past about bringing interdimensional travelers into the fold.”

Steve frowned. “I can talk to him,” he offered. “Explain everything.”

A brief flicker of a smile came to Tony’s lips, but it was pained. “No, Steve. Not this time. I have to handle this one.”

“You don’t have to handle it alone, though,” Steve offered quietly.

“I do. This time, I do.” Tony reached over to give his shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Make yourself at home, I promise it won’t take long.”

Steve reluctantly watched Tony leave with Rhodey, who glanced back at Steve several times. He could hear the punctuation of Rhodey’s sharp whispers to Tony before they turned into a meeting room. Any hope Steve had of trying to read lips vanished as the glass windows went dark, masking Tony and Rhodey from view. 

He did try to listen as he passed, but could hear no sound coming from the room. Steve hesitated a moment more, but then continued toward the living quarters. 

Just from seeing the pictures of Steve, he knew that he looked pretty much identical to him. Where Steve had been able to tell the differences in Tony’s appearance, he understood why Rhodey might not have been able to spot his. Maybe Rhodey had thought he was some sort of clone, some attempt from Tony to get his old husband back. Or maybe Rhodey was more magically inclined in this dimension, and thought Tony had sold his soul to some mage in exchange for his Steve. With everything that had happened in his life, Steve really didn’t see either option as an impossibility. 

But something still felt  _ off.  _ He couldn’t shake it. It was the same feeling that had prompted him to put the gun in his backpack. 

The feeling grew worse as he walked the halls toward the kitchen. There were no sounds of distant voices, no clacking of utensils from the kitchen. Tony had said the team was supposed to be here, and Steve saw no sign of them. Tony hadn’t even warned him of what to do if he came across them without Tony there. To the people who lived here, he was a ghost.

As he entered the kitchen, there was more evidence that no one from the team was there. All of the food in the fridge was neatly stored—something only those with a military background would do. But it didn’t make sense that Rhodey would be living here alone. Surely other Avengers needed the compound to stay in touch. 

He noticed a thin film of dust on the toaster as he moved to the cabinet where they always stored mugs. In this dimension it was no different, but there were several mugs Steve didn’t recognize. Even so, those mugs were the only evidence he had that other Avengers actually stayed here.  

Steve made his way toward Tony’s bedroom without really thinking about it. Of course, it wasn’t really Tony’s bedroom. As soon as he slipped through the door, he was reminded of that. 

None of the photos here had been taken away. In fact, the room looked nothing like the penthouse in terms of decoration. Even in darkness, he felt more comfort than he had there. 

Steve must have picked the art, he decided. All of the pieces on the walls piqued his interest—so much so that he asked Francine to turn on the lights so he could examine each one up close. Between each art piece was a collection of photos: Tony and Steve’s wedding day, a baby Peter presumably coming home for the first time, Peter with blocks, Peter eating blocks, Peter taking a sink bath, Peter crying, Peter smiling—so much Peter. 

A strange shape in the corner of the room caught his eye, and Steve turned to see…a child’s pack-n-play. A tiny comforter and a few toys lay unsettled inside. It gave Steve chills to think that Tony hadn’t set foot here for…God, he didn’t even know how long. Years. 

He had to get out of here. Steve felt an all too familiar twist in his gut that warned of oncoming danger, and he knew better than to ignore it now. 

With a last look over the room, Steve adjusted his bag on his shoulders and headed for the exit. He knew how to lay low and avoid Tony’s tech, but he’d never actually been on the run with Tony actively seeking him out. Tony always knew where he was and had chosen not to go after him. This time, Steve doubted he’d be so lucky. Drones could spot him from the air, and at night they would use thermal cameras to track him if he hadn’t escaped to a populated area. From there, he’d…

The thought of never going home began to feel real now. And god, he missed Tony. He missed knowing that no matter how angry or upset Tony was with him, he would never hurt him. They didn’t have the relationship that has existed in this dimension, but Steve was beginning to think that maybe that was a good thing. Fighting or not, Tony was his close friend and confidant—it seemed silly that they were even fighting. Steve couldn’t even remember what they had fought about at this point. But he wished his Tony was here, so they could find a way out of this together. Hell, Steve wouldn’t even mind if he had to stay in this dimension if it meant he got to have Tony with him. 

Steve reached a door that lead to the outer hallway, and pressed the touchpad beside it. 

The door didn’t open. 

“Francine,” Steve tried. 

There was a pause before he answered: “I’m sorry, sir. I’m not permitted to allow you to leave the property unattended.”

Shit. Steve pushed out a breath. “Did you notify him that I tried to leave?”

“Yes. I’m sorry—”

Steve jogged back a few steps, silently gauging if this door looked bulletproof or not. He doubted it was, since it was an interior door, but that meant the next door would be. Probably missile-proof, actually. 

Either way, this was going to hurt.

Steve collected himself, then broke for the glass door to—

“Steve?” 

Bucky’s voice. 

Steve whipped around, but saw no one. “Bucky?” he called. 

“Steve—” Bucky’s voice was strained, “help me.”

He couldn’t place where the voice was coming from. It didn’t sound like it was coming over any sort of speaker, but there simply wasn’t enough space in the room to warrant the voice coming from anywhere close by. 

“Where are you? I’ll come find you—who hurt you?”

Tony hadn’t mentioned anything about Bucky being here, but maybe that was the point. Tony still didn’t trust Bucky, but maybe it was more sinister than that. It made sense that Bucky might have even been involved with whatever had happened to the Steve and Peter here. 

“I don’t know,” Bucky struggled to get out. “Where are you?”

“West wing, south door,” Steve replied quickly. 

“Thought so,” Bucky replied evenly.

Steve didn’t have time to reply before Tony rounded the corner. He tapped his watch, a frown on his face. A hologram image of Bucky’s face disappeared as he did so—a voice changer. Great.

“You always did drop everything for him,” Tony said quietly. “Even to your detriment.”

The hair rose on the back of Steve’s neck. “Even to my detriment, huh? I can’t tell if you’re threatening me or just trying to make me feel guilty for wanting to help my best friend.”

Tony sighed. “I’m not threatening you.”

Steve let out a snort. “Yeah, well. I’m feeling threatened.”

“I’m sorry,” Tony replied. And it actually sounded genuine. Too bad Steve no longer believed it. 

“I’m stuck in here— _ trapped  _ in here. No one from the team is here except Rhodey, who’s now disappeared. None of this is sitting right with me, and that little stunt you just pulled is not doing you any favors right now,” Steve hissed. 

Tony pursed his lips. “I know. I fucking know. But I can’t—Just let me explain. I can’t let you run off before I explain.”

“Where’s Rhodey? Let’s start with that,”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Well, he’s not tied up in a room somewhere, if that’s what you’re thinking. He’s in the lab, waiting for us.”

Steve’s eyes narrowed. “He didn’t seem to be very happy to see me. Or you.”

“I know.” Tony sighed. “He wasn’t supposed to be here. But I explained myself, and I think you should talk to him.”

That feeling of danger was still humming in his bloodstream as Steve considered the proposal. Finally, he shook his head. 

“I want to know why you’re acting like this, and why you brought me here. Clearly you didn’t bring me to meet the team. You lied to me.”

Tony looked pained. Steve could see fear in his eyes, but also frustration. He saw the way Tony’s hands curled into fists before relaxing, over and over again. Steve knew he could break the door and escape if he needed to, and he had a feeling Tony knew that too. 

“It’s the only way to know,” Tony whispered. “What happened that day. It’s the only way to know.”

Steve’s brow furrowed. As much as his bad feeling hadn’t left him, his heart still hurt at the sight of Tony so upset. “Only way to know what, Tony?”

Tony shook his head sadly. “I can’t tell you or it won’t work. We have to go to the lab. Rhodey can explain some of it to you, but I can’t. If I do, it won’t work.”

He had to listen to his gut this time. Going with Tony wasn’t the right answer. 

Steve shook his head. “Please let me go, Tony. I don’t want to force my way out, but I’m not participating in whatever it is you have going on here. Not if it’s something you can’t tell me about, and something you had to lie to get me involved in.”

Curiosity did tempt him to figure out what was happening, but healthy skepticism told him that It probably wasn’t something he ought to be part of. Tony never lied to him about projects, and certainly never faked Bucky’s voice to get him to stay—his Tony wouldn’t even dream of doing something like that. It was becoming very apparent that this Tony and his Tony were not the same, no matter how much Steve had admired him at first. 

He wondered if it had always been this way. He doubted it. The loss of a husband and child would destroy anyone, but to a man like Tony it would be beyond devastating. Mental illness was certainly within the realm of possibility here, and while Steve didn’t want to leave Tony to face it alone, he feared that maybe this was worse than anticipated. Enough for Tony to lose the team—maybe enough for the Avengers to abandon him too. 

Fuck. 

But Steve shook his head again, and stepped backward toward the hallway door. 

“Let me go, Tony. Do the right thing.”

There were tears leaking down Tony’s cheeks now. “Steve,” he begged. “I need your help. Just come to the lab and it’ll all make sense, I promise.”

“I’m not going to do that,” Steve said quietly. “Unlock the doors and let me go. Please.”

Tony let out a silent sob, then turned away. 

Steve heard the click of the door unlocking behind him and quickly opened it. 

“Thank you.” He felt like he should say more, but the words wouldn’t come. He wasn’t sure anything he said could fix what Tony was feeling, and this certainly wasn’t the parting Steve had envisioned. 

So he shut the door behind him and jogged to the perimeter door. He was guessing he only had a few minutes before Tony changed his mind—maybe a few hours if Rhodey could convince him not to give chase. But tony would come for him, Steve just knew—

A sharp pain exploded in the side of his thigh. 

“What the--?” He looked down to see what looked like a bee, stinger lodged in his leg. He felt the burning venom seep into his bloodstream and plucked the insect from his leg with a grunt, holding it up to get a better look. 

It was no bee at all, but a nanobot made to look like one. 

“Fuck!” Another sting, this time to his arm. 

Steve ran for the door, but his right leg was going numb and sluggish. 

Another sting to his shoulder. 

He grabbed the door handle, pulling it open to spring for the trees. There was a heavy step to his right foot, then he hissed as another nanobot stung his left ankle. 

Steve kept running, kept getting stung. 

He made it hallway across the lawn before he hit the dirt, sliding to a stop in the grass, his body crumbled over itself. 

He tried to speak, but his mouth wouldn’t move. His eyes began to close, vision spinning as it dimmed. Was he still falling? He couldn’t remember any impact, but he also couldn’t get his hand out in front of him to brace for one. 

Years passed. Or maybe minutes. He couldn’t tell. But there were footsteps beside his head, some murmuring voices.

A searing pain lanced his spinal cord, and then there was only blackness.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: this chapter is GRAPHIC and involves gore. also heavily revolves around death. if that's even remotely something that bothers you, please discontinue now.

Steve had been captured by the enemy many times in his life, and he didn’t think he’d ever woken up in a way that could be considered “peaceful,” but this time he was pleasantly surprised. Of course, he was still tightly secured to something that resembled a mix between a hospital bed and a dining chair, but he didn’t have a pounding headache or pain. The discomfort came from the areas he had been stung—they itched and his muscle felt prickly, like his limbs had fallen asleep. The grogginess from waking up felt natural, and Steve found he was clear-headed in a matter of moments.

His first instinct was to test the straps that secured him, which turned out to be a useless exercise. He was hopelessly tied down, with no way of moving whatsoever.

“I encourage you to try,” Tony said quietly.

Steve snapped to look at him, eyes widening at the sight of Tony surrounded by blood bags. A mountain of them, bright crimson.  He jerked as he fought to look at his arms for any IV holes, though they probably would have healed over by now.

“It’s not yours,” Tony assured him. He looked pained. “I don’t mean to sound like a supervillain here—and I’m aware I look the part with you right now—but I didn’t want it to happen this way. I was…it was going to be different.”

Steve scowled. “Right. That doesn’t change that it did happen this way—that you chose for it to happen this way. You’re still in the wrong.”

Tony flinched, gently thumbing over some Sharpie markings on a blood bag that Steve couldn’t read. “I promise you’ll go home as soon as we’re done.”

“You mean in three months?” Steve snapped.

“No, as soon as we’re done,” Tony replied quietly.

It took Steve a moment to understand. “You mean you could have sent me back all this time?!?” He could have been home, he could have been with his Tony, somewhere safe and familiar. His _home_. “What the hell, Tony!”

Tony stood abruptly, fists clenched tight at his side. “I had to make sure, Steve. I couldn’t mess this up.”

Steve fought at his restraints, teeth gritted tight. He could have been home. The very thought enraged him and made him feel helpless at the same time. There was nothing he could do—sure, he could fight his way out, only to live in a world that wasn’t his own. The only way back was through Tony.

“Maybe you should let me explain this one,” Rhodey said evenly, the door to the lab clicking shut behind him.

Well, at least Rhodey wasn’t dead, though Steve wasn’t too keen on trusting him if he was going along with this.

Tony said nothing. He stared at Steve, those too-blue eyes searching for something Steve knew he couldn’t give. He was thankful that those eyes had been so unnerving in the beginning. He should have listened to his gut.

Then again, his gut had also told him those eyes were familiar. Maybe a different color, but familiar.

“I’m sorry it has to happen this way, but I’m not sorry that we’re doing this,” Tony murmured. He straightened, nodded to Rhodey, and hurried out of the lab, looking close to tears.

Steve didn’t waste time. “Start explaining. “

Rhodey licked his lips uncomfortably, and picked his way around the desks and equipment to sit in the seat Tony had just vacated.

“You’re not the first Steve to come through here,” Rhodey began. “You’re the 51st.”

Steve couldn’t school his face. “What?”

Rhodey swallowed. “Tony told you that the first portal went haywire. It did. We closed the portal, then created another one after some reevaluation. We decided to use the technology with the Infinity Stones to make sure our dimension was safe. Several stones were sent to far-off dimensions and lost. Then came the Accords, the war, and then Steve passed.”

Steve still couldn’t get over the fact that Tony had so blatantly lied to him. He’d seen that map, those portals.

“We didn’t know it, but Tony took matters into his own hands. He found out he could target the dimension technology to bring things from other dimensions. Namely, various Steve Rogers’.” Rhodey sighed. “I found out about the third one when he broke into the lab. He was insane. Our dimension was so radically different than his that he lost it—we introduced him too fast.”

“Introduced?” Steve snapped.  “That’s a person you’re talking about, not a lab rat!”

Rhodey lifted his hands in surrender. “I know—I’m sorry. We sent him back, convinced him he was dreaming. Tony fessed up to experimenting and I demanded he put a stop to it. It wasn’t…” He trailed off, wringing his hands in his lap. “I’ve never seen him so lost. We tried to get him into therapy, into counseling, but he was obsessed with this idea of finding Steve. And…I mean, I can’t explain the process or it doesn’t work. You can’t—Spoiling it affects the outcome, so to speak.”

“So you’re siding with him,” Steve said gravely. He leaned back in his chair. “I don’t need to hear anything else. Just do whatever you’re going to do to me.”

At least the ceiling was the same as the one in the lab he knew. Steve hadn’t spent too long in the lab at the compound, but he’d slept there a few nights while Tony worked, soothed by the quiet noises of clicking tools.

“No, you need to know,” Rhodey said. “I’ve had a hard time living with this, and now it’s almost over. Tony kept experimenting without telling anyone. Tried every approach to get you—to get the Steves—to cooperate, made changes each time. The tech got better each time, the targeting system. I found out again, and just said fuck it. I convinced him not to fall into some batshit crazy fantasy of finding a copy of his Steve to keep like a pet. But we had to find a near-perfect genetic match for what we needed to do, which wasn’t easy. When we hit fifty, he said he’d given up, but he kept tweaking. When he pulled you…you’re the match.”

“Match for what, Rhodey?” Steve jabbed his chin toward the blood. “Is that my blood? Is he what, cloning me?”

Rhodey struggled for words. “No, that isn’t blood from you. It’s…it’s his blood.”

Steve cocked a brow. “Tony’s? What the fuck, Rhodey!”

“Not Tony’s!” Rhodey sighed. “Not Tony’s. Steve’s. Our Steve. We took blood from him constantly, secured it in a top-secret location in case he ever needed a transfusion. Normal human blood worked fine on him, but cut his healing factor. Having his own blood on hand sped up the process.”

A shiver ran up Steve’s spine, a darkness started to creep up along with it.

“What are you going to do to me?”

Rhodey frowned. “Slow down, Cap. We aren’t going to hurt you. And I promise you’re going home after this. I promise you.”

That wasn’t as comforting as it should have been.

Steve struggled when Rhodey approached him, and started to yell just as a rag was forced into his mouth. The restraints didn’t budge, nor did they feel the slightest bit weakened. Fifty other versions of him had probably tried to escape this place, and fifty tweaks had been made to ensure none of them succeeded.

The fight became useless, so Steve finally relented to save energy and begin looking for a possible point of weakness in whatever was about to happen to him.

Rhodey slipped two IVs into each of his arms, connecting ports to each with practiced ease.  

“We’ve only done this four times,” he added after a moment of thought. “First few times we had to figure out why things weren’t working. By the time we discovered the genetic match requirement, we only had enough blood for two more tries.” As if that would somehow make him feel better.

Rhodey wrote some notes on a tablet, checked a few monitors, and then Tony entered.

Steve couldn’t help but clench his fists when he saw him. Tony looked like he had recovered from whatever emotion he’d faced earlier, and he rolled his seat closer to be at Steve’s side this time.

The lights went low. Rhodey started moving equipment around them, clearing space.

“I promise I’m not going to hurt you,” Tony assured him. It held no weight with Steve. He glared at Tony as a pair of glasses were pulled from Tony’s pocket, identical to the pair he was currently wearing. He slipped them on Steve’s face.

“We’re going to collect all of your blood, and replace it with blood from my Steve,” Tony explained quietly. “You’re going to feel strange, because I’ve altered it. You’ll feel awake, but you won’t be able to see anything for awhile. And when you can, you won’t be here.”

Steve wrestled his restraints as Tony smoothed back his hair.

“Listen,” Tony said earnestly. “I want you to know this, so listen, okay?”

Steve tried to find the proper curse to spew, but couldn’t get any words out around the gag.

“Whatever happens when you wake up, you can’t stop it. It’s going to feel real, but like a dream at the same time, you understand? You can’t stop it. It has to happen.”

Tony turned to look at the setup of blood bags and tubing, and pressed something on a tablet beside him. Steve heard a hum, a few clicking noises, and then a rhythmic _whoosh_ that reminded him of a windmill.

He watched as the saline solution in the tubing was replaced with red at each arm—new blood coming in, old blood coming out. Like fucked up dialysis.

The new blood was cold in his veins, and it wasn’t long before Tony was laying a thick blanket over him to stop him from shaking. Steve tried to scream many times, but the fear rendered him mute with terror.

That, and his body was starting to feel strange. He began to lose feeling in the arm where the new blood was coming in, and the numbness started to travel his body. When he tried to test the restraints again, only some of his body worked.

Time began to slip away from him. Steve couldn’t really remember where he was, or even who he was. Tony spoke to him in words he couldn’t understand, and he felt lips press to his forehead as his vision went black, though he was positive his eyes were still open.  The cloth slipped from his mouth, pulled away. He couldn’t move his mouth to speak anyway.

There was a low sound, and Steve swore he could feel time slowing.

Then silence. Blackness.

More silence.

And then he was standing at a mirror, a razor in his hand, shaving cream on his face. Except it wasn’t his face, and he couldn’t move the new body he’d been given. He was present—possessing of this body, but unable to control it, no matter how hard he struggled.

 

* * *

 

Steve stood at the sink, gently running the razor over the line of his neck, butterflies in his stomach. He didn’t think he’d been this excited about anything since—God, he didn’t know. But it probably had something to do with Tony then, too.

He brought the razor back over his cheeks and jaw, carefully carving away the short beard that had grown there. He wanted to look the way Tony remembered him, the way he remembered himself back in that place.

“Papa?” came a call from the kitchen.

“Yes?” he answered, washing off his blade before going back in to finish his cheek.

He heard the clink of a spoon against ceramic, and the pattering of little feet as Peter ran into the bathroom to join him. It wasn’t a room big enough for the two of them to fit easily, but Peter was small, and made himself at home sitting on top of the closed toilet seat behind Steve.

“Is Daddy gonna remember me?” Peter asked.

Steve laughed, washing off the blade again. “Peter, you just talked yesterday. Why would you think he wouldn’t remember you?”

“I mean my face,” Peter said, little fingers drumming on the toilet seat. “He hasn’t seen my face in a long time. I growed a lot.”

“Oh, you mean recognize you,” Steve said, drawing the blade over his jaw another time, just to make sure he hadn’t missed any spots.

“Recognize, yeah.”

“He’s seen pictures,” Steve assured him. “You have grown a lot, though. Did you know you’re almost six inches taller than when we first came here?”

“That’s like a whole foot!” Peter exclaimed, kicking his feet. He hit Steve’s calf a few times, and he was thankful he’d finished shaving before the company.

“Half a foot. Still close, though.”

Steve washed his face in the sink after pulling the drain, then inspected his work. A good, clean shave. He gently applied his aftershave—Tony’s favorite scent—and turned to Peter before scooping him up.

“Did you finish breakfast?”

Peter gave him a shy smile that said he definitely hadn’t, so Steve brought him back to the table where his cereal bowl sat half full. He sat Peter in his chair, moving around him to finish washing dishes.

“Daddy’s really coming this time?” Peter asked.

Steve looked at Peter over his shoulder, his grin threatening to split his face. “Yes. I promise.”

Two years they’d spent in this tiny apartment in France. Two years he’d raised their son alone, but safe. Tony didn’t even know where they were, and this spot had been meticulously chosen to be busy but tucked away. A place where Peter could grow and still be a child instead of staying all but imprisoned in a small apartment.

But it was also a place where Tony only existed in the form of spotty encrypted phone calls. Steve hadn’t seen Tony’s face in the flesh for two years, though he was fortunate (or unfortunate, as it was some days) to have such a high-profile husband that he got to see Tony’s face on magazines and TV quite often.

Tony wasn’t lucky enough to have seen him.

_I fucking miss your face._ He heard Tony’s voice in his head, one of their last late-night conversations.

And now they would finally be seeing each other again. Not without sacrifice, but Steve had decided months ago that if signing the Accords meant his family got to be together again, it was worth it. Steve was one of the few holdouts anyway. Reuniting the remaining superheroes was the best way to end the fighting.

And god, he wanted to see his husband again.

“Are you gonna show Daddy your French?” Steve asked as Peter continued eating.

“ _Oui_ ,” Peter laughed. “We can talk in code, Papa!”

Steve chuckled. “Not for long. Daddy knows a lot of French.”

“Awh man.” Peter frowned around another bite of cereal.

Steve felt a buzzing in his pocket, and his heart started to beat right out of his chest. “Daddy’s calling right now,” he informed his son, pulling out his phone. Only Tony had the number here.

“Hey,” he answered softly.

“Hi,” Tony greeted, his voice choppy. “I’m close, I think. If you turn on your location I can be there in under an hour, max.”

“Daddy!” Peter squealed, bolting from his chair and attacking Steve’s legs.

Steve knelt down and scooped up a writhing, excited bundle of four-year-old. “Peter says hi. He can’t wait to see you.”

“Can’t wait to see him,” Tony replied, his voice soft. “You too, babe.”

Steve smiled wide as Peter smashed his face against Steve’s to listen to the conversation.

“I have our bags packed,” Steve said, back to business. “Passports are good to go in case we need them.”

“You won’t, but I know you’re always prepared anyway.”

“We could meet you at the street corner,” Steve offered. “Just get in the car and go.” He ached to be home, to be wrapped in Tony’s embrace and all of the familiar surroundings he knew and loved.

“I have to see what I put you through,” Tony said. “Where you’ve been living. Gotta see.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “You didn’t put us through anythi—"

“Come see my room, Daddy!” Peter all but shrieked. Steve shushed him through laughter.

“I will, kiddo. I’ll be there so soon,” Tony said, “Lickity split.”

“Lickity-split,” Peter repeated, feeling the words out on his tongue.

“Really fast,” Steve clarified, though he knew Peter didn’t need it.  He used the lapse in excitement to set Peter down, ruffling his hair. “Go grab your bag, Pete. And get Papa’s shield.”

That set Peter off at a run—he loved holding the shield.

“Is it bad that I’m really tempted to make out with you in front of our son?” Tony laughed.

“A little, yeah.” Steve held the phone closer, as though it might bring Tony faster. “You okay?”

“I’m okay,” Tony assured him. “I’m about to be more than okay when I see the both of you. Just think, in a few hours we’ll be snuggled up on the jet.”

“Yeah, after I sign the paperwork on the tarmac,” Steve groaned.

“We could figure it out if you don’t want to sign,” Tony offered, as he always did. “They can’t come after us now, nobody agrees with the government interfering. The only opposition that would hold any weight is the other superhumans.”

Steve shook his head, staring down at the sink. Why had he even washed the dishes? They weren’t ever going to set foot here again. Thank God. “I made my choice, and it’s final. Should have done it a lot sooner.”

Tony didn’t say anything for a moment. “I love you so much. Ping me and we’ll be gone, Cap. Lickity split.”

“I’d scold you for that, but now you’re gonna have to hear it constantly too,” Steve chuckled. Then his voice softened, “I love you too.” So much his chest ached just saying it. “So much.”

“See you soon,” Tony murmured.

“See you soon.” Steve ended the call and hurried to wipe the moisture from his eyes as Peter returned, only his face and ankles sticking out from behind the shield, his suitcase rolling along behind him.

“Thank you,” Steve said, ruffling his hair again. He navigated his phone and hesitated only a moment before clicking the “Allow Location” button.

_Got it,_ came the text from Tony, almost immediately _. Only five minutes away!_

Steve clicked the button again, ending location sharing. He took a breath and strode into his bedroom, collecting his duffel.  

“Daddy’s gonna be here in five minutes,” Steve told Peter, trying to settle the excitement building within him. He set his duffel by the door and stacked Peter’s on top of it, collecting his son in his arms. Peter liked to feel tall when he held the shield.

“Can I hold it when Daddy comes?” Peter asked, all but bouncing in Steve’s arms. “he’ll think I’m really tall!”

“Yes,” Steve laughed, giving Peter a little squeeze. “How about I duck so he can’t see my head? Like this?” He ducked and raised Peter a little higher.

Peter squealed with delight. A winner.

Suddenly his phone buzzed where he had put it on the table.

Tony would never call twice like that.

“Sir!” a voice came from the phone he hadn’t heard in two years. Steve stiffened, lowering Peter to the ground immediately.

“Sarah?” he asked, his throat closing.

“Projectile approaching, PREDATOR missile—your location must have—”

Steve grabbed Peter by the shirt and threw the door open, all but throwing Peter out into the hallway. Peter gave a panicked scream, and Steve snatched the phone before flying out into the hall. He grabbed his son and bolted for the outside door.

“Ten seconds—”

“Mute!” Steve shouted as Peter began wailing in his ear, still clutching tightly to the shield.

The grungy carpet was slippery, and Steve fell onto his right elbow several times, the edge of the shield cutting into his flesh as Peter continued to scream. The muted grey of overcast sky was visible out the door window as Steve wrenched the door clean off its hinges.

He ran for the open field beside the apartment building.

They had to make it.

They _had_ to make it.

Suddenly he was flying. Weightless.

His arms churned, hands flailing for earth, but there was only fire, ash, scorching heat.

He hit the ground so hard he heard his bones break as he bounced along the dirt, skidding to a stop among earth on fire.

Gold flashed in the sky.

Steve tried to scream, but his chest buckled and his throat filled with molten copper. His ears rang as he tried to process, his eyes widening. Peter. Peter was there.

Steve dimly realized he was on fire as he clawed his way toward the shield. He was sure he’d recognized where it had landed before, but time was no longer relevant. He didn’t know what was going on, couldn’t remember even the second he was currently experiencing as he fought his way to the shining metal.

A secondary explosion rocked the ground, the force of it lifting the shield slightly and throwing Steve onto his back.

“Peter!” he tried to scream, but only the wet copper rushed from his mouth.

He saw a hand, small and round. Delicate skin blistering and burning away like thin paper, turning black and stiff.

He screamed. He screamed so hard he felt his lungs rip open and felt as they began to fill with blood. Blood was seeping everywhere. His organs were splitting at the seams, blood filling crevices he knew it shouldn’t.

“Steve!” He heard a mottled scream, and then there were icy hands at his face, pulling him from the sight of that still-burning hand, those pudgy fingers curling, thinner and thinner.

Tony was there, screaming. No words, just screaming.

The mask was flipped up, and Steve could see the back of Tony’s throat as he just screamed, veins popping in his forehead, tears streaming hot down his cheeks.

Steve tried to tell him that Peter needed help, tried to turn to show Tony, but Tony kept turning his head back, stopping from screaming only to shake his head, to whimper and sob.

It was a strange thing to feel his organs drowning inside of him. Drowning from the inside out—that was what was happening. He could see his skin burning away, but couldn’t feel it. There was no pain, just the odd sensations of dying.

Like his brain boiling. He could feel it happening in his skull, slowly but surely simmering the life away from him.

Tony’s face was burning. Steve could see the blisters forming on his cheeks where his skin was exposed. He knew he was supposed to be telling Tony something…something about someone he loved but—

Tony’s face was burning.

“Tony—” A fountain of crimson burst from his lips, spraying Tony’s face. Steve used every ounce of his being to lift a hand—now blackened except for where white bone stuck through at his knuckles and skin yellowed before it began to melt away.

His whole body shuddered violently as the heat continued burrowing into his brain, so violently that Steve couldn’t see Tony clearly anymore, he was so blurred.

Until hands came to his face, holding his head still. Tony’s face. Tony Stark.

Steve fought to smile. He hadn’t seen Tony in so long. But there were holes in his lips, or maybe he no longer had lips.

“I got you, baby,” Tony whispered, so close to him. “I got you. I got you. Shhh, Steve, shh. It’s me, I got you.”

Tony.

Steve jerked his head, twisting as he felt ligaments snapping, his heart madly pumping blood into his gaping chest cavity.

“Tony,” it came out garbled and weak, but he spoke. “Tony.”

“Yes,” Tony sobbed. “I’m here, I’ve got you, baby.”

He loved Tony. Steve’s body shuddered, wrenching as his nervous system started rapid firing, a swan song before it melted inside him.

“I love you so much—”

“Tony—”

“Yes, baby. I love you, I love you—”

Tony’s eyes were so warm. Chocolate. Hot chocolate. Steve remembered Tony hated when he said chocolate. Eyes are not food. Chocolate.

“Tony.”

Tony moved closer, his brown eyes ringed red, bloodshot. He was speaking, but Steve couldn’t hear.

“Ton--” he choked, but blood filled his mouth before he could finish.

Everything blurred except for a cup of hot chocolate, a ceramic mug held by warm, familiar hands. Tony. Those hands released the mug, moving through Steve’s chest, cradling his heart so that it was warm too.

He took a breath, even and slow, watching as Tony smiled at him, still holding his heart in his hands. “Good morning,” Tony murmured, his voice soft and sleepy. “You want some hot chocolate?”

White sheets floated around him, gently embracing him in comfort and relaxation.

Steve smiled. “Yes.” He was so warm. “That would be good.”

Tony kissed him. It lingered, and Steve opened his eyes, momentarily struggling against Tony’s mouth because it hurt—it was burning—

Tony let go, kissing his forehead. The pain ceased. Steve sank back into the mattress.

“Hot chocolate for one Steve.” That was him. “Coming right up.”

 

* * *

 

“Steve!”

He was screaming, the pain radiating from all parts of his body. His head swung wildly, his chest collapsing as he endured the full effects of his injuries.

Tony’s ghost was there, right in front of him, hands on his shoulders, fucking blue eyes just boring into him as he called his name over and over.

Steve screamed louder, as though it might stop his organs from failing, his lungs from collapsing, and his brain from boiling in his skull. Tony kept talking to him, screaming right back at him until Steve realized he wasn’t moving.

He paused briefly to notice that he was restrained, and the memories hit him like a freight train. He actually lurched, and slumped back into the chair, breathing harder than he ever had as an asthmatic.

“He’s back,” Tony choked out, his voice hoarse. He could hear Tony’s lips sticking with tears, his voice hoarse and ragged. “Get him on a light sedative—light, please.”

There was movement, and Steve closed his eyes until he could feel cool liquid running into his vein.

“You’re okay,” Tony soothed, gently dabbing his forehead with a damp cloth. “You’re safe.”

Steve wrinkled his nose and attempted to make a noise of disgust, but didn’t have the energy. He was shaking so hard he could barely concentrate on his own breathing. His body no longer felt like his own—and he recalled Clint talking about being unmade. He understood now. He also understood how Bucky had felt, torturously stuck in someone else’s body that wore his face.

Tony unclasped his restraints, and Steve immediately curled up on the chair like a frightened child. Not that frightened child—goddammit. He let out a whimper, but it didn’t sound like it was even coming from him.

“Easy, watch those needles, Steve,” Tony soothed, gently easing his arms free, uncurling Steve from his ball just as soon as he’d settled into it. “You’re safe, you’re back at the compound in the lab. Nothing—Nothing’s gonna hurt you.”

Steve eyes rolled in his skull as another flashback—if it could be called that—seared through his head. That tiny hand, the way Tony’s skin had started to blister and peel. They way his eyes…

Steve turned abruptly to look Tony in the face.

Tony tucked his quivering lower lip between his teeth, watching Steve patiently, sadly, with tears still leaking fresh from those impossibly blue eyes. The eyes that were familiar and trustworthy yet so off, so unsettling.

“Your eyes,” Steve rasped.

Tony closed his eyes, tears wetting his cheeks anew as he nodded slowly, shakily. When he replied, it was so quiet Steve wouldn’t have heard it if the room hadn’t been so goddamn silent:

“His eyes. They’re his.”


	8. Chapter 8

“When we evac’d Steve, he was still alive,” Tony explained that evening. Steve had been moved to a different room where the lights gave an amber glow and everything was warm and dark. It made him think of the room he’d seen upon first arriving, with the familiar lights and dark wood. He wasn’t sure what it reminded him of now. He was afraid to remind himself of anything. 

“His body was broken, internal organs failing, but we saw signs that he might make it. Or at least that’s what they told me. I’m not sure any of it was true now.”

Tony offered him a glass of water. Steve hadn’t moved from bed since stumbling into it, and he hadn’t yet been able to stop his shaking. Tony lifted the glass to his lips and he took a few sips, then turned his head away. 

“His eyes healed in the time they used to keep him alive, and I tried to use the BARF tech in the hospital room to find out what had happened, but I couldn’t access anything. Dr. Cho hypothesized that she might be able to access genetic material in Steve’s eyes to reconstruct the memory if we had the Mind Stone,” Tony continued. “We didn’t, but I thought I could find it again, but…” His fingers tapped the glass apprehensively. “We lost Steve. I knew he wouldn’t want his eyes to be transplanted to anyone else, but I couldn’t let him go. Not without trying.”

Steve closed his eyes. His chest ached terribly—a feeling he hadn’t experienced since Peggy’s death, and before that, when he’d figured out their date had come and gone seventy years prior. It was a terrible kind of heartache—a dull, clawing hurt. It had been with him since waking from that nightmare, rendering him practically useless. He couldn’t think straight unless it was to scare himself shitless thinking back to what had happened. 

“Obviously, it didn’t work. We couldn’t access memory without a host. I wasn’t enough of one, and…I mean, you know the rest, I guess.”

“Why couldn’t you just live with not knowing?” Steve hissed, cringing as he readjusted himself in the bed. Ghosts of those terrible injuries hadn’t left his system. Every movement felt like it would bring immense pain. 

Tony didn’t answer right away. 

“Because the government said it was my tech that killed them,” he murmured. “They knew I’d pore over every document to find out who decided to launch, who decided to target you—to target our fucking son. And they listed my tracking system, and one of my missiles.”

Steve could hear that eerie voice announcing the oncoming PREDATOR missile, and he could feel that fear jumping to his throat, a deep, overwhelming instinct to protect his son. Tony’s son, someone else’s son. 

“It wasn’t one of yours,” Steve muttered. 

“I know that now,” Tony said quietly. “Thanks to you.”

Steve gave a light snort. “Not like I had a choice.”

“I know, and I’m sorry about that. But I had to know.” 

“So why didn’t you stop there?” Steve growled. “Why didn’t you pull me out when you knew it wasn’t you?”

He turned to look at Tony, and was surprised to see that tears had already streaked his cheeks, though his voice was as steady as ever. At least, until he spoke again. 

“Because I—I had to know if he blamed me. I had to know if—if—”

Steve met his eyes and nodded minutely. He understood. It didn’t justify putting him through all of that unwillingly, but he understood. 

“He loved you,” Steve assured him. “Even at the very end.”

Tony bit his cheek, trying to stifle a sob. “Yeah.”

Steve was exhausted. He didn’t know how he was going to sleep, but staying awake didn’t seem to be an option anymore. Yet each time his eyes closed and he thought of sleep, his heart started to race, a precursor to jumping right back into the flames and debris. 

“Steve,” Tony murmured, gently patting his arm. “Do you want me to stay?”

That wasn’t a fair question. No, he didn’t want Tony to stay. He wanted Tony to send him back home, to get him out of here instead of just sitting here at his bedside. But just the thought of Tony leaving made Steve feel anxious, like the shadows in the room would grow until they swallowed him whole. 

Instead of answering, Steve just reached out, gently taking hold of Tony’s sleeve.

Tony took his hand, giving a firm squeeze. “Okay. I’ll sit right here while you rest.”

Tony’s presence barely helped. Steve’s sleep was chock full of new nightmares, blending his past fears with the hell he’d just endured on Tony’s behalf. He saw the portal to his world close right in front of him. Other times he jumped into the portal only to be torn apart, each tendon and ligament stripped from him slowly by an invisible being. He watched Peter burn alive, watched his face turn skeletal and then to ash. He also had nightmares of Tony waking up, eyes ringed with blood and ash, Steve’s eyes in his sockets, staring at him before Tony began to scream in agony. 

He jolted awake several times, and he was fairly certain Tony drugged him after the first few, because as terrified as he was, he couldn’t stay awake long enough to even be comforted. Tony was right there, of course, but his words were muffled and distant, as if he was speaking from a different room.

He wasn’t sure how long he slept, but it was light outside when he was jolted from a quieter nightmare—once where he was left to bleed out and die in that burning field beside the apartment complex. 

“Hungry?” Tony asked upon noticing that his eyes were open. “I made oatmeal with fruit. It’s pretty good.”

Steve’s eyes fluttered closed again, but only for a moment. He was too tense to even think about sleeping again. 

“I guess,” he rasped, his voice ragged from screaming several times in the night. At least, he was pretty sure he’d screamed. His memory was failing him. 

Tony stood, his body stiff as he walked from the room.  He looked almost worse off than Steve, if that was possible. 

While Tony was out, Steve sat up a little, groaning as he felt his back stick to the sheets. He was basically drenched in sweat, skin clammy and slick. Even the backs of his ears felt damp. 

Tony returned with a bowl of steaming oatmeal, carefully handing it to Steve once he’d sat up properly. 

“How are you feeling?” Tony asked after Steve had taken a few bites. 

“Exhausted.” There wasn’t much else to say. The air was stagnant, the dust swimming in circles where the light came through the windows. His skin felt too tight and too loose at the same time. “When do I go home?”

He wasn’t going to let Tony forget his promise. Not when Steve had suffered like that.

“We have one more test, then you’ll be home,” Tony said evenly. 

Steve knew that tone. “I thought yesterday was the test—what other test?”

“Nothing like yesterday,” Tony was quick to say. “It’s just a…think of it as a follow-up. To put you back in balance.”

Steve’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”

“To stop last night from happening,” Tony explained. “Alleviate the trauma.”

“What? Why didn’t you do that yesterday?” he snapped.

Tony opened his mouth to speak, then clamped his jaw shut. After a moment, he swallowed uncomfortably. “We have to put you under again. With Steve’s blood.”

Steve went tense. “No,” he growled. “I’m not doing that again.”

“It won’t be like last time—”

“I. Don’t. Care. I want to go home.”

Tony sighed. “You can’t do that until we fix this. Last night will be every night if you don’t let me fix it.”

He almost said no. He almost demanded to go back home and call Tony’s bluff. But the fear crept from the base of his spine, its claws sinking into his flesh. Those memories were burned on the backs of his eyelids now. 

His lack of reply was enough of an answer for Tony, who visibly relaxed. 

“Eat some breakfast and we’ll get you back in the lab. Once we get you fixed up, we’ll get you home. I promise you, you’ll be home by tonight.”

Steve nearly choked on his oatmeal upon hearing that. “Really?” he blurted out. Nothing sounded better than seeing his Tony tonight, to hold him and kiss him and everything else he’d been lacking here. 

Tony frowned, eyes glazing over with something bitterly sad. 

“Eat your breakfast,” he said quietly, moving to his feet from the edge of the bed. “I’ll come back in an hour and we’ll get started.”

Steve watched him go, then curled his bowl of oatmeal in his hands, trying to suck the warmth from it. It made him suddenly nervous to be alone, but he didn’t want to talk to Tony anymore. He could feel that his body was deeply unsettled, as though he’d been set on an uneven foundation. He supposed that made sense, considering he’d been occupying the mind of a dead man. 

So he decided to think about what he would do when he got home. His oatmeal was finished quickly enough, and soon Steve was curled up in bed, awaiting his fate. Thoughts of his Tony kept him from any panic attacks, but by the time Tony returned, Steve was itching to get back to the lab. He couldn’t live another day with nightmares like that just behind his eyes. 

“Are you ready?” Tony asked quietly when he entered the room. 

Steve was already standing, looking out the window at the forest outside of the compound. There was no way to be ready for what was to come. Steve couldn’t prepare to see those things again, and he hoped like hell that whatever Tony had planned was actually going to work. 

Maybe he’d been brainwashed. He couldn’t see any other scenario where he could comply with this to experience it a second time. Yet when he turned, Tony didn’t look tense or worried. He just looked…frightened, but it didn’t look like he was frightened for Steve. 

Even so, his stomach churned as he followed Tony out into the elevator.  

“It won’t be like last time,” Tony reminded him. “When you know what to expect, it’s a lot easier.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better about it,” Steve murmured. “I just want to go home.”

“I know,” Tony replied gently, looking over at him. “I promise you’ll be going home today.”

“I don’t necessarily trust you to be truthful anymore,” Steve muttered, but he looked down at his feet, not really committed to the statement.  He couldn’t trust Tony, but he had no other options. Essentially, he was a willing prisoner.

As the elevator doors opened to the lab, Steve took a deep breath, and stepped forward to meet his fate. 

Again. 

  
  



	9. Chapter 9

Steve stood at the sink, gently running the razor over the line of his neck, butterflies in his stomach. He didn’t think he’d been this excited about anything since—God, he didn’t know. But it probably had something to do with Tony then, too.

He brought the razor back over his cheeks and jaw, carefully carving away the short beard that had grown there. He wanted to look the way Tony remembered him, the way he remembered himself back in that place. 

“Papa?” came a call from the kitchen. 

“Yes?” he answered, washing off his blade before going back in to finish his cheek. 

He heard the clink of a spoon against ceramic, and the pattering of little feet as Peter ran into the bathroom to join him. It wasn’t a room big enough for the two of them to fit easily, but Peter was small, and made himself at home sitting on top of the closed toilet seat behind Steve. 

“Is Daddy gonna remember me?” Peter asked.

Steve laughed, washing off the blade again. “Peter, you just talked yesterday. Why would you think he wouldn’t remember you?”

“I mean my face,” Peter said, little fingers drumming on the toilet seat. “He hasn’t seen my face in a long time. I growed a lot.”

“Oh, you mean recognize you,” Steve said, drawing the blade over his jaw another time, just to make sure he hadn’t missed any spots. 

“Recognize, yeah.”

“He’s seen pictures,” Steve assured him. “You have grown a lot, though. Did you know you’re almost six inches taller than when we first came here?”

“That’s like a whole foot!” Peter exclaimed, kicking his feet. He hit Steve’s calf a few times, and he was thankful he’d finished shaving before the company. 

“Half a foot. Still close, though.”

Steve washed his face in the sink after pulling the drain, then inspected his work. A good, clean shave. He gently applied his aftershave—Tony’s favorite scent—and turned to Peter before scooping him up. 

“Did you finish breakfast?”

Peter gave him a shy smile that said he definitely hadn’t, so Steve brought him back to the table where his cereal bowl sat half full. He sat Peter in his chair, moving around him to finish washing dishes. 

“Daddy’s really coming this time?” Peter asked. 

Steve looked at Peter over his shoulder, his grin threatening to split his face. “Yes. I promise.”

Two years they’d spent in this tiny apartment in France. Two years he’d raised their son alone, but safe. Tony didn’t even know where they were, and this spot had been meticulously chosen to be busy but tucked away. A place where Peter could grow and still be a child instead of staying locked away. 

But it was also a place where Tony only existed in the form of spotty encrypted phone calls. Steve hadn’t seen Tony’s face in the flesh for two years, though he was fortunate (or unfortunate, as it was some days) to have such a high-profile husband that he got to see Tony’s face on magazines and TV quite often. 

Tony wasn’t lucky enough to have seen him. 

_ I fucking miss your face. _ He heard Tony’s voice in his head, one of their last late-night conversations. 

And now they would finally be seeing each other again. Not without sacrifice, but Steve had decided months ago that if signing the Accords meant his family got to be together again, it was worth it. Steve was one of the few holdouts anyway. Reuniting the remaining superheroes was the best way to end the fighting. 

And god, he wanted to see his husband again. 

“Are you gonna show Daddy your French?” Steve asked as Peter continued eating. 

“ _ Oui _ ,” Peter laughed. “We can talk in code, Papa!”

Steve chuckled. “Not for long. Daddy knows a lot of French.”

“Awh man.” Peter frowned around another bite of cereal.

Steve felt a buzzing in his pocket, and his heart started to beat right out of his chest. “Daddy’s calling right now,” he informed his son, pulling out his phone. Only Tony had the number here. 

“Hey,” he answered softly.

“Hi,” Tony greeted, his voice choppy. “I’m close, I think.”

“Daddy!” Peter squealed, bolting from his chair and attacking Steve’s legs. 

Steve knelt down and scooped up a writhing, excited bundle of four-year-old. “Peter says hi. He can’t wait to see you.”

“Can’t wait to see him,” Tony replied, his voice soft. “You too, babe.”

Steve smiled wide as Peter smashed his face against Steve’s to listen to the conversation. 

“I have our bags packed,” Steve said, back to business. “Passports are good to go in case we need them.”

“You won’t, but I know you’re always prepared anyway.”

“We could meet you at the street corner,” Steve offered. “Just get in the car and go.” He ached to be home, to be wrapped in Tony’s embrace and all of the familiar surroundings he knew and loved. 

“I have to see what I put you through,” Tony said. “Where you’ve been living. Gotta see.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “You didn’t put us through anythi—"

“Come see my room, Daddy!” Peter all but shrieked. Steve shushed him through laughter. 

“I will, kiddo. I’ll be there so soon,” Tony said, “Lickity split.”

“Lickity-split,” Peter repeated, feeling the words out on his tongue. 

“Really fast,” Steve clarified, though he knew Peter didn’t need it.  He used the lapse in excitement to set Peter down, ruffling his hair. “Go grab your bag, Pete. And get Papa’s shield.”

That set Peter off at a run—he loved holding the shield. 

“Is it bad that I’m really tempted to make out with you in front of our son?” Tony laughed. 

“A little, yeah.” Steve held the phone closer, as though it might bring Tony faster. “You okay?”

“Sort of,” Tony answered. “I’m about to be more than okay when I see the both of you. Just think, in a few hours we’ll be snuggled up on the jet.”

“Yeah, after I sign the paperwork on the tarmac,” Steve groaned. 

“We could figure it out if you don’t want to sign,” Tony offered, as he always did. “They can’t come after us now, nobody agrees with the government interfering. The only opposition that would hold any weight is the other superhumans.”

Steve shook his head, staring down at the sink. Why had he even washed the dishes? They weren’t ever going to set foot here again. Thank God. “I made my choice, and it’s final. Should have done it a lot sooner.”

Tony didn’t say anything for a moment. “I love you so much. Be there soon. Lickity split.”

“I’d scold you for that, but now you’re gonna have to hear it constantly too,” Steve chuckled. Then his voice softened, “I love you too.” So much his chest ached just saying it. “So much.”

“See you soon,” Tony murmured. 

“See you soon.” Steve ended the call and hurried to wipe the moisture from his eyes as Peter returned, only his face and ankles sticking out from behind the shield, his suitcase rolling along behind him. 

“Thank you,” Steve said, ruffling Peter’s hair again. He looked down at his phone, briefly wondering how Tony would know where to find him with the location so encrypted. But Tony was Tony, and maybe he had a way to keeps tabs on them even though he’d told Steve otherwise. For Peter’s protection, he was sure. 

“Daddy’s gonna be here soon,” Steve told Peter, trying to settle the excitement building within him. He set his duffel by the door and stacked Peter’s on top of it, collecting his son in his arms. Peter liked to feel tall when he held the shield. 

“Can I hold it when Daddy comes?” Peter asked, all but bouncing in Steve’s arms. “He’ll think I’m really tall!”

“Yes,” Steve laughed, giving Peter a little squeeze. “How about I duck so he can’t see my head? Like this?” He ducked and raised Peter a little higher.

Peter squealed with delight. A winner. 

Steve laughed, settling Peter on his hip again as he looked around their little kitchen. It had been kind of nice to have such an inconspicuous home. It had certainly reminded Steve to be thankful for the luxuries he’d been so lucky to have while raising Peter, and how lucky he had been in having a husband like Tony. No man was a better father or husband. 

“Are you gonna miss it?” Steve asked Peter. “You were pretty little when we left the old house.”

“We can come back,” Peter said nonchalantly. “But we don’t have Daddy here. I wanna have Daddy here.”

Steve kissed Peter’s temple. “Me too.”

He’d considered it a few times; inviting Tony here to live off the grid. They could stay unnoticed by the world for a while, just live as a little French family. But he was never sure if Tony wanted that, or if he  would be miserable. 

There was a soft knock at the door, and Steve’s heart jumped to his throat. Peter wriggled wildly for Steve to put him down, but didn’t run forward. In fact, he moved behind Steve’s legs as he walked to the door. He considered looking out the peephole, but he didn’t want his first view of Tony to be fish-eyed. 

So he just…opened the door. 

Tony was standing there, wearing glasses with black rims and yellow lenses. He hadn’t aged, literally. Those big brown eyes were framed with the same inky lashes, his facial hair still immaculate. 

“Steve,” Tony murmured. He stepped forward, eyes brimming with tears. 

Steve found he couldn’t move. It didn’t seem like Peter could either, because Steve could still feel the weight at the back of his legs. 

“Hey, Tony,” Steve whispered, his voice shaking. 

Tony reached out to touch him, but Steve noticed a strange, blueish tone to his skin—almost like it was shimmering. But the touch to his cheek was real, the warmth of Tony’s hand present and  _ there _ . 

“It wasn’t my fault,” Tony said softly, those tears leaking out. 

“Oh honey—” Steve lifted his hands, framing Tony’s face. “I know. I know it wasn’t.”

Tony nuzzled into his touch, savoring it in a way Steve had never seen him do before. His hands folded over Steve’s, holding him in place. 

“I don’t know why I told you to ping your location. I could have spent an extra few minutes decoding the coordinates and lifting my own goddamn encryption.”

Something skipped in Steve’s brain, causing him to jolt just slightly. He had no idea what Tony meant—yet he knew exactly what he was talking about. 

“Um—”

“Instead I killed you both. Even if the missile wasn’t mine, I killed you both, Steve.”

“Tony,” he soothed, thumbing at Tony’s cheeks. “Look at me.”

At first, Tony didn’t move, but then his eyes lifted, staring up at Steve through his lashes. 

“You protected us. You kept your promise and protected us. It wasn’t your fault we had to go.” Steve kissed his forehead, noticing now that Peter’s weight was gone. Peter was gone. 

The room shimmered around them, and Steve could feel heat, the distant crackle of a fire. The beginnings of smoke wafting through the air. 

“Steve—”

“Let him go,” Steve said, pulling Tony in and wrapping his arms around Tony, cradling him to his chest and squeezing tight. “Don’t take him away from this.”

“But I could come see you,” Tony choked out, his voice muffled. “We could go back to Malibu, back to Colorado—we could be back with Peter when he was so little—”

Steve could feel himself peeling, the confines of reality tearing him from himself like pieces of Velcro. He didn’t have long. He didn’t want to leave, but he could not stay. 

“We are so proud of you,” Steve soothed, carding his fingers through Tony’s hair, stroking the back of his head. “But you have to let him go, honey. It won’t bring us bah….bah…”

His speech was failing him, and his vision started to darken. 

“But we would still be together,” Tony pleaded. “Don’t leave, don’t—”

Steve’s hands didn’t feel like his own as he squeezed Tony tighter, all but crushing him. “I love you so much. I love you so, so much. It’ll be better, baby.” He pressed his lips to Tony’s temple, but found they were too numb to feel the kiss. “It wasn’t your fault. I kn—” He fought to continue. “I kn-ow you jus—you just wanted—us home.”

“Steve, please,” Tony begged. “Don’t go.”

The world began to spin. He saw fire, he felt the flames licking at his bones, the acrid smell of burning flesh, of charred ground. He couldn’t stay. 

“Be kind,” Steve rasped. “I love—”

 

 

 

Steve was launched from the memory with a feeling akin to splitting in two. It hurt, and he gripped his chest tightly, his heart squeezing tight in a way he’d never experienced. He couldn’t breathe, yet his lungs were straining, pushing hard on his ribs as he fought for air.  A guttural noise pushed from his throat, but nothing else. 

“Steve, you’re in the compound,” Rhodey said loudly, suddenly looking over him. “Breathe, Cap. C’mon.”

Steve wasn’t sure how to do that. He struggled against the latches on his arms, thankful he was secured so that the IV needles didn’t break under his skin. 

_ Breathe. _

He didn’t remember how that was possible. 

_ Breathe! _

Finally, Steve let out a gasp, sucking down a mouthful of air that tasted sterile. He panted hard, his vision swirling as he tried to reorient himself. 

The shaking started up again, but Rhodey seemed to expect that, and a blanket was draped over Steve in a matter of moments. The tinted glasses on his face were pulled off, and once the needles were free from his arms Steve curled into a ball on the bed. 

That was not how things had gone last time. He had no idea how any of that had happened, how Tony had interrupted a memory and changed it. The BARF technology Steve knew could alter memories, but only slightly. Only to help with accepting the reality. 

“Where’s Tony?” Steve blurted out from underneath the blanket. “Where is he?”

“He’s right here,” Rhodey assured him, patting his shoulder. “He has to recover too.”

Steve remembered the glasses on Tony’s face in the memory—or whatever they had just experienced. He even remembered recognizing them, but the thought had been tied down, stuck in the back of his brain in a place he wasn’t able to access in the moment. 

“What was that?” Steve asked, squeezing his eyes shut. The headache developing behind his eyes was threatening to split his skull. 

“I don’t know,” Rhodey replied. “I could only hear what you were saying, I couldn’t see what you were experiencing.”

He heard Rhodey say something to Tony, but couldn’t make out the words. As painful as his headache was, Steve noticed he wasn’t in a panic. It was nothing like the last time had been, and Steve was hopeful that meant he wouldn’t be so frightened of sleeping later. 

“Hey.” Tony’s voice, slightly hoarse. 

Steve felt gentle pressure on his shoulder where Tony gently began to knead. 

“Was I possessed?” Steve croaked. 

“Not…no,” Tony replied, but he didn’t seem to like that answer. 

Steve waited for more, and it wasn’t long before Tony spoke again. 

“When you’re connected to the BARF technology, you’re essentially accessing an archive within Steve. This time, I uploaded a program I created that uses Steve’s past memories to…I guess yeah, I turned you into a vessel so I could—”

“Talk to him again,” Steve finished, head pounding. 

“Yeah,” Tony replied. “So I could…that was him, you know? I got to see him. But no, it wasn’t him. Just an AI program that used his memory archive to generate realistic replies.”

Steve looked up at him then. “It didn’t feel like that,” he said. “It felt like it was really him.”

Tony let out a halfhearted snort. “Yeah, well. I am pretty good at writing those things.”

“So.” He swallowed hard. “Do I get to go home now?”

There wasn’t an answer right away. Tony looked down at his hands, his mind clearly distant. 

“Are you ever going to forgive me for this?” Tony asked unexpectedly. 

Steve blinked, vision swimming as his headache flared.  

“I don’t know.”

Tony nodded. “Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. But yes, you’ll go home once you’ve rested.”

“Tonight,” Steve reminded him. 

“Yes, tonight.”

He noticed that Tony looked different. There was something about his form that had changed, loosened. 

“Are you going to be okay now?” Steve asked quietly. “No more kidnapping?”

Tony laughed, but it was shallow. “I think so. I mean, I used to have this big, gaping hole. Now it’s crammed full of concrete. It’ll take awhile to get used to the weight.”

Steve nodded. He didn’t know if he should forgive Tony, but he was pretty certain he would. After all, he’d been willing to throw the Avengers away to protect Bucky, to save him from ever being tortured again. Loss brought out a darkness in him, and it appeared that it brought out a darkness in Tony too. 

If he had the ability, he may have done the same thing to find out what had happened to Bucky after his fall, and if someone had killed his Tony, he would do it then too. Not to mention if he had a son. 

He knew that loss now. He understood why his mother had been so insanely protective of him, why she had put herself in harm’s way to shield him from his father, and why she had only allowed Bucky to take care of him once she absolutely knew he was capable of protecting him. 

“Your bedroom here,” Steve rasped after a moment. Tony looked over with an eyebrow cocked. “Peter’s things. You shouldn’t have them here.” 

Tony’s throat tightened. 

“You should be able to live here,” Steve clarified. “Keeping Peter’s baby things—he’s gone now, Tony. Leaving them will only make you feel like he could still come home someday.”

It was hard not to cry when Tony started crying. So Steve let himself cry too, sitting up despite his headache to pull Tony to his chest. He knew that hope now—it was the same hope that Tony’s Steve had clung to those two years in France, the same anticipation that he’d someday have the life he’d lost. 

“God, I’m sorry,” Tony choked out, pulling away. “I haven’t gone in there in so long—It feels like he’ll still be there.”

“I know,” Steve murmured. “How about this—I can help you. Would it be easier with me there?”

“Yes,” Tony replied immediately. “That—yeah.”

He’d experienced what Tony’s Steve had felt about this man, and it was impossible to forget that. Steve loved Tony with all of his being. It was a kind of love he didn’t know actually existed—Steve truly saw Tony as the better half of himself, the part of him that could do no wrong. Of course, he knew full well they had fought, but none of those fights had really mattered in the end. That Steve would have wanted him to set his Tony on the right path, leaving him kindly and in a good place. 

“We’ll make it so you can live here again, and then I’ll go home.” Steve offered a warm smile, because he did care about this Tony. He shouldn’t, but it was impossible not to when he’d quite literally experienced the love this Tony could give. 

“Yeah—sorry,” Tony sniffled, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “Then you can go home.”

Steve reached over to grip Tony’s shoulder, giving a little squeeze. “It’ll be easier now that you know. It’ll make you angry and it’ll make you unhappy for awhile but…” he swallowed hard. “It does get easier.”  _ And sometimes you’re lucky enough that they come back from the dead _ . 

Of course, Tony wouldn’t be. 

  
  



	10. Chapter 10

It took a few hours of rest to get to a point where Steve felt he could function again, and Tony had been right in saying that the last session would help him sleep. He wasn’t plagued by fire and smoke the moment he shut his eyes, though it was hard not to hear the echoes of another voice coming from his mouth, another voice loving Tony in a way he wasn’t sure he ever could. 

Rhodey tried to offer some encouragement, but he only popped in occasionally. Steve didn’t mind being alone this time, because he knew Tony needed more help. And it wasn’t like this Rhodey even knew Steve well enough to help him through anything. 

His stomach growled, and Francine asked him if he wanted a meal.

“Just an MRE,” Steve muttered, scrubbing his face in his hands. “Vegetarian, if you have any.”

“Of course,” Francine replied. “Do you want to make it yourself or should I?”

“You can.” 

A thought occurred to him. 

“Francine?”

“Yes, sir?”

“What did you say your old name was?”

There was a brief pause, as though she had to think about it. “My previous name was Security Asset Response Analyst: Home.”

A wall panel opened, revealing a prepared MRE. He could smell that it was vegetarian lasagna. Not his favorite, but much better than the pork sausage patty flavor that always seemed to come his way when he didn’t ask for vegetarian. 

Steve plucked the MRE from the serving tray and set it on the nightstand to warm a little more. 

“When did you say he changed your name?” 

Another pause. “I’ve been asked to omit the date when asked, sir.”

“They day he died—the day  _ they  _ died, then,” Steve said quietly. 

“Yes, sir.”

“And they called you Sarah. After my mother.”

“Yes,” Francine replied quietly. 

Steve nodded once, scooping some lasagna out on a cracker. “He called you Sarah when the missile was coming.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it, sir. All of my data for that date has been cleared.”

Sarah. He didn’t know how he would feel about calling a supercomputer his mother’s name, but Steve had to have had a reason for doing so.  For Peter, probably. As much as Jarvis had been like a father to Tony, and later a friend, maybe Sarah was meant to be the supportive person in Peter’s life to attempt to recreate the love of a grandmother. Odd, but the Steve in this dimension seemed to share Tony’s affection for machines and robots in a way he didn’t. 

Though he did like DUM-E. And Friday wasn’t so bad either, though Steve still didn’t talk to her like she was a person. He just couldn’t, not when she wasn’t physically there—but he did try.  He thanked her for things, and was always polite. 

“Thanks for the MRE,” he said mid-meal. Maybe he wasn’t as polite as he liked to think he was.

“Sure thing,” Francine replied cheerfully. “And whenever you’re in a good place, Mr. Stark has indicated he’s ready to begin reorganizing the bedroom.”

Steve nodded slowly, already halfway through his meal. Habit. 

“I’ll come by his room in a minute, thanks.”

Reorganize. Of course Tony wouldn’t call it cleaning, the implication being that he was somehow wiping Peter and Steve from his life, as though they were dirty. Steve made a note not to say anything that might imply as such. 

Once his meal was finished, he changed into an outfit Rhodey had brought him some hours ago. Another one of Steve’s, he was sure. The shirt fit perfectly and was exactly his usual style. The pants were comfortable too, a pair of sweats that were impossibly soft. 

He knocked quietly on Tony’s door before entering to find he and Rhodey sitting at a small table, discussing a small pile of photographs strewn across the surface. 

“Hey, Steve,” Rhodey greeted with a nod. “Feeling better?”

“Yes, thank you,” he replied with an easy smile. “D’you know where my backpack is? I didn’t see it in my room.”

“Ah, right. I’ll grab it for you and leave it in the lab.”

Steve noticed that the photos were of Tony, Steve, and Peter. Some were clearly taken by Tony or Steve, and a few crooked, blurry pictures looked like they may have been Peter’s work. 

Somehow, the sight of the photos gave Steve a feeling of calm. It washed over his soul, soothing the frayed edges that he hadn’t known were still in disarray. 

“Ready?” Steve asked. 

Tony was looking down at the table, scanning over the photos. “Yeah.”

“I’ll put them back,” Rhodey promised, standing up. “Go with Steve.”

Tony patted Rhodey’s forearm before he finally stood. He still seemed hollow to Steve, like he might collapse in on himself at any moment. 

Steve extended his hand, eyes on Tony.

Tony looked up at him, meeting his eye for only a moment before he took Steve’s hand, lacing their fingers together. He was warm, and Steve knew at once how sturdy Steve must have felt being with this man. Back when he was a whole person. 

Rhodey didn’t even cast a disapproving look as they left Tony’s room, heading down the hall toward the place where Tony and Steve had lived so long ago. 

“I remember putting together that pack ‘n play,” Tony said as they walked, voice distant. “Took two hours for me to figure out how to get the canvas over the metal rods. I would have just made one myself, but I wasn’t about to let Steve know I couldn’t put it together.”

Steve laughed softly, because his Tony would do the same thing. God, he couldn’t wait to see him. 

“Was he impressed?”

Tony let out a snort. “Hardly. He said he’d nearly called the police because I’d been gone so long. I guess Peter threw a tantrum while I was working on it, so I lost points there too.”

Steve didn’t say it, but he was pretty sure there was no way Tony could ever have lost any points with Steve in any scenario. 

When they arrived at the bedroom door, Steve was surprised to find himself hesitating to open it. Steve’s feelings and memories had been his own for those two sessions, and the thought of seeing those baby things was painful now. More than he’d expected. 

“You feel it too?” Tony asked, squeezing his hand. 

“Uh, yeah,” Steve confessed. “Didn’t think I would.” He frowned as he looked over at Tony, but then pressed the door open anyway. 

The smell of the room made him tense, and he found he was preparing himself for an onslaught of memories, like a flashback. None came. And somehow that was worse. 

Tony slipped his hand away, though he brushed Steve’s back as he moved past him and straight for the pack ‘n play. He didn’t say a word as he picked up the blanket inside and began to fold it. Methodical, like it wasn’t the favorite fuzzy blanket of his dead son.

But how did Steve know that it was his favorite?

He moved over to Tony’s side to pull out the teddy bears and other stuffed animals from the bottom, carefully setting them on the floor.

“I’ll disassemble it,” Tony said curtly. “If you can strip the bed, I’d appreciate it.”

“You sure?” Steve asked, but he wasn’t talking about the chores. 

Tony stopped folding the blanket and looked up at him. “Yes. Please.”

Steve did as told. They were both silent as they worked, and Tony had the pack ‘n play folded down in a matter of minutes as Steve took the sheets, duvet, and pillowcases and put them beside a laundry hamper still full of dirty clothes. 

“Tony—”

“They’re Steve’s,” Tony said quickly. “Put the sheets in there.”

Steve shoved the bedding into the hamper, stuffing to down so that it didn’t extend over the top. Tony plucked picture frames off the wall without even looking at them, tossing them haphazardly onto the pack n’ play. 

“Tony—”

“Don’t,” Tony grit out. “I’ve had enough time to wallow. I just need to get this done.”

It only took them fifteen minutes to strip the room. Everything was gathered in a pile in the far corner, or shoved into the laundry hamper. A pair of Peter’s socks were crumpled underneath a nightstand, likely shoved there because Peter hated wearing socks enough that sometimes they just disappeared when he was crawling around. 

Tony went through every inch of the space ensuring every trace of Peter and Steve was put away. They didn’t speak, and Steve pretended not to notice when Tony took too long staring under the bed. Peter had always like to shove toys under there just to see if he could trick them into getting on their bellies to fish them out. 

Steve flinched when he heard that jelly-belly laugh echo in his head. 

“I keep…His memories are in my head,” Steve said suddenly. “I’m seeing and hearing things that I’ve never experienced.”

Tony frowned, gingerly sitting down on the bare mattress. “You may just be imagining them. Steve wasn’t in your head long enough to transfer much. Is it that day?”

Steve shook his head. “Peter didn’t like socks. He shoved toys under the bed to make us fish them out because he thought it was funny. I can hear his laughter, Tony.”

Tony blinked, clearly surprised. “I’m…That’s not supposed to happen. I don’t know why that would happen. Unless—was Steve thinking about those things when he…when he was dying?”

“No,” Steve said with another shake of his head. “He thought about you. About hot chocolate, curling up with you somewhere with…I don’t know. White sheets, like a movie. But you were getting him hot chocolate because he was cold.”

But Tony already knew that. He’d seen everything Steve had through the glasses the first time through. 

“I can run some tests,” Tony offered. “We have enough blood left to maybe run another session, something to wipe you.”

Steve shuddered. “Uh, I’d prefer another term.” 

Tony cringed slightly. “Right. Sorry. But I can target whatever Steve put in you, get rid of it.”

Steve considered it for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t want to delay going home. Might just be because he was just in there, you know? And this is a familiar space. His blood is probably still in my system a little.”

“The memories don’t come from the blood, Steve. It’s from the genetic—”

“Yeah—I just don’t want any more tests. I want to go home.”

But even as he said it, his gut twisted.  _ This is home. _

“As soon as possible, please,” Steve added, trying to shake the thought. This place was  _ not  _ home. 

Tony sighed, then gave him a weak smile. “Of course. Thanks for, uh, helping. Rhodey is going to take everything to storage when he heads home.”

“Are you staying here?” Steve asked. “I don’t think it’d be a good idea for you to be alone, Tony. It’s still fresh for you too.”

“As if Rhodey is going to let me stay here by myself,” Tony laughed, but it was a bit sour. “He’d sling me over his shoulder and drag me out before that happened.”

He stood, offering Steve his hand this time. “C’mon. Let’s get your backpack and get you home. I can have you back in an hour.”

An hour. Steve’s throat tightened with a mixture of excitement and a pull of regret. He definitely wanted to leave but…it seemed too soon. It still felt like they had another chapter. Something else to become. 

“Tony—” He cut himself off, not even sure what he was going to say. 

“Yeah?”

He shook his head and took Tony’s hand. “Nothing.”

Tony waited a moment for Steve to say something further, but when nothing came, he just squeezed Steve’s hand and they walked toward the lab. “I’ll go as fast as I can, Steve, I promise. I know your Tony is probably worried sick about you.”

Steve made a noncommittal noise. “I’m not so sure about that. He probably thinks I’m giving him the silent treatment. I was heading over to see him after a fight when…I came here.”

“When I kidnapped you,” Tony corrected, reading Steve’s initial thought exactly. 

“Well, yeah.”

“Sorry to say I don’t regret it,” Tony said matter-of-factly. “I don’t.”

Steve couldn’t help a little noise of indignation. “I mean, that’s fair, but lying to me and strapping me to a chair against my will?”

Tony pursed his lips. “Right. Yeah, that wasn’t good.”

“I’ll say.”

He looked over at Steve. “I’m sorry about that. I could have handled that better.”

_ “I could have handled that better.” _

_ “You threatened me on live television!” _

Steve stopped in his tracks, momentarily dizzy. 

“Steve?” Tony stepped closer, lifting a hand to his cheek, thumbing there to inspect his eye. 

“Something’s happening,” Steve said, stepping back. “I just…you two fought about something and you said that. You threatened him on live television?”

Tony paled, squeezing Steve’s hand tight. “Steve,” he said carefully. “You need to let me run some tests. That’s not supposed to be happening.”

Tony’s eyes were brown, his skin warm and glowing. 

_ “Welcome home,” _ he said, gesturing toward a bedroom.  _ “Figured we needed a sp—” _

Steve stepped back, freeing his hand from Tony’s. The floor shook beneath him, or maybe it was gravity that was shifting. 

“Tony—”

“You’ve got to watch him too, you know,” Tony said, stepping toward him sharply, the lines of his face drawn with anger. “Maybe everyone else thinks you’re—taking you to the lab—but I like to consider myself a committed parent. Just because my dad was a douchebag apparently means everyone gets to assume—come with me.”

Steve squeezed his eyes shut. Tony’s hand clasped his wrist, tugging him forward. 

_ “Papa!” _

“Steve, you have to move—”

He opened his eyes and he was at the tower, his fingers curled in the thick carpet beside the fireplace. Peter toddled toward him, clutching a few toys in his chubby hands. 

“Don’t say anything about me being late,” Tony muttered as he strode across the room. Steve’s hands moved up, catching Peter once he’d reached him. 

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” he called as Tony went into the bedroom. 

“I can hear you thinking. And it’s  _ loud _ ,” Tony called back. 

Steve kissed Peter’s cheek, picking him up and putting him on his lap. 

Hands were at his face, rough, calloused. 

Blue eyes. 

Steve blinked furiously, and gradually he fought his way back to the hallway, the compound. Tony. 

“Steve?”

“M’here,” he slurred, squeezing his eyes shut again. “I dunno what just happened.”

“You saw Peter,” Tony tried. “And he was little, it was before you left--before  _ they  _ left.”

“I don’t know,” Steve said. “Yes. Probably. I was at the tower, you were saying not to say anything about you being late.”

“You were talking out loud,” Tony explained. “Please, Steve, if you go back to your dimension with this, it might not be fixable.”

“It could just be a passing thing,” he tried, but he knew it was pointless. 

“Or it could be a we-have-to-fix-it-now thing,” Tony said, eyes weighted with concern. “One that ends with you slobbering on the floor at home if we don’t.”

“I want to go home,” Steve said, and he hoped it didn’t come out as desperate as it felt. 

Tony frowned, nodding slowly. “I know, Steve,” he murmured. “I want to get you there.” 

“If I stay here longer, I might not leave,” Steve blurted out , and he knew he shouldn’t have. 

Tony stared at him wide-eyed, mouth slightly agape. He stammered for a second, trying to find something to say. 

“And I want to go home,” Steve added quickly. He didn’t want to give Tony any ideas. 

Tony swallowed hard.  “Yeah, okay. Gotta do the tests first, Steve.”

Something heavy settled in his chest and it left a bad taste in his mouth. 

“Yeah. Tests. Let’s go.”

  
  



	11. Chapter 11

The lab seemed quieter when they entered this time. Or maybe more peaceful. The soft clicks and whirrs of machinery seemed to still as they moved into their now-familiar places: Steve in the medical chair and Tony in the chair beside it, methodically strapping Steve into the various restraints. Tony’s hands were warm, and it lingered even as his fingers moved away. Though Steve kept his eyes on the straps, he could see Tony out of the corner of his eye, glancing up at him every so often to make sure everything was okay.

Steve found himself wondering if his Tony was even waiting for him, or if he just assumed that Steve was still ignoring him. Maybe he had a flood of texts waiting for him, or none at all. Or maybe Tony was angry. Tony didn’t really like arguing with him in person when he could send texts instead.

But he had a hard time imagining this Tony doing something like that. It was selfish, maybe, but this Tony would cherish him. Make sure never to let him go. There would be no mistaking any of Tony’s actions for ones indicative of a man falling out of love.

He didn’t have that guarantee with his Tony. Not by a long shot.

“You’re being awfully quiet for a guy who wants this over with,” Tony murmured, prepping one of the IV needles.

“Thinking about what’s waiting for me when I go home.” He wouldn’t bother to hide it.

Tony met his eyes then, holding his gaze long enough that Steve felt his cheeks start to turn hot.

“He loves you, Steve,” Tony said. “You’re going back there.”

“I know,” Steve said almost indignantly, but he couldn’t deny the little bit of hurt that leaked out. Tony wanted him to stay before, even if he hadn’t said it. “But what if he doesn’t?”

Tony didn’t reply right away and instead slipped the needle under Steve’s skin. When he did speak, it was soft. “Then maybe you could come back.”

“I don’t want you to wait for me, though,” Steve said, and he couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth. He barely knew this Tony—he’d been here for less than a week and now he was talking about coming back?

“Won’t be,” Tony said. “That’s the thing, Steve. I’m waiting for him. Always. That’s not to say there can’t be someone else, but I know there won’t be.”

Steve frowned. “Even if I came back, you’d wait for him.”

“Yeah,” Tony murmured, looking away. “Nothing personal.”

“I know,” he replied, but he wasn’t sure he believed it.

Tony didn’t connect him to BARF technology this time. He insisted that Steve still was going to be in the program, but it wasn’t going to be an active experience.

“This may take awhile. I have enough blood for maybe two hours of work and I’ll find a way to fix whatever’s happening in there. You may have vivid dreams that are Steve’s memories, but It won’t be an experience your body is actually going through,” Tony explained as blood started filling the tubes on either arm. “Just relax. I promise I’ll take care of you.”

 

Steve believed him then.

 

The subfloor at his feet was covered in a thick layer of dust, and only part of the room had the dark mahogany they had discussed. As usual, Tony had lost track of time, gotten distracted, let another project go unfinished. A ridiculous project at that. Steve could see much better uses for this kind of money than building a twentieth century ballroom and bar. They didn’t have enough friends to fill this kind of space, and half of them wouldn’t be interested in yet another party full of booze and too-small appetizers.

“Can’t imagine why you’re down here,” Tony announced upon heading from the elevator.

Steve turned on his heel, staring hard at his husband. Tony was dressed in a sharp suit, with dark sunglasses that probably weren’t coming off any time soon. His hair was more unkempt than usual, and Steve was pretty sure he could smell perfume when he advanced on him.

“I like to appreciate my birthday presents,” Steve returned with a false smile. “Do you think it’ll be done by my next birthday, or will I have to wait some more?”

“Hey, while we’re on the subject of waiting, want to tell me where those divorce papers are?” Tony snapped, loosening his tie.

“They’re coming, don’t worry about that,” Steve growled. “Was kinda hoping I’d have this room finished to serve them in. Or should I go to whatever supermodel’s house you’ve been staying at this week?”

Tony cut him a glare. “Doubt her security team would let you in the front gate, and there’s a mile-long driveway for you to walk with a stick up your ass.”

“I think I can handle it.”

“I hope so,” Tony spat.

Steve scowled, anger boiling beneath his skin. “I don’t get why you even came back here. It’s embarrassing enough to live here while you’re living with other people.”

“Thought you didn’t care what other people thought, darling,” Tony drawled, making a show of checking his watch. “Is that why you aren’t divorcing me? That ol’ pre-war pride?”

Steve bristled. “I’ve had other things to take care of.”

“Mhm.” Tony pulled his phone out, and Steve immediately reached over to put a hand over it.

“I’m talking to you.”

Tony yanked his phone away, stepping back as he started to text someone. “I’m listening.”

“You can at least pretend I’m still your husband. I figured that earned some kind of respect from you,” Steve cut, but he wasn’t sure he kept the anger in it as long as he wanted to.

Tony lifted his brows but didn’t look away from his phone. “I’m here, aren’t I? That’s more respect than I give a lot of people, Rogers.”

The hurt that leapt up in his gut made his eyes hot and itchy.

“Listen to me,” he pleaded softly, his voice cracking.

Tony looked up from his phone for only a moment. “Great. Now you’re crying. Always making me the bad guy, aren’t you?”

 

 

Then, a memory he knew was his own:

 

 

Tony sat at the edge of a pile of rubble, his shoulders heaving, his helmet lodged in the earth beside him. The air was thick with smoke, with small flames peeking out from underneath concrete and rebar.

“Hey,” Steve said quietly before plopping down on the dirt beside him. They were both exhausted, but the world ablaze around them was comforting, not sinister. It was quiet, which meant the battle was over. Finally fucking over.

“Hey,” Tony replied. He tipped over, resting against Steve’s shoulder, the weight of the battle finally crushing down on him.

Steve turned, wrapping his arms around the metal as best he could to get Tony comfortable. He pressed a kiss to Tony’s temple and closed his eyes.

 

 

He did love Tony, he knew that now.

 

 

Then he woke up, he felt a weight in him that hadn’t been there before. His body ached, and there was a tiredness in it that didn’t seem like it would go away anytime soon. His limbs felt heavy as he pushed himself up, and he noticed that the lab was darker, the lights dimmed.

“Tony?” Steve rasped, lifting his hands to rub his eyes. The IVs had been taken out, and the punctures in his arms already healed over.

“I’m here,” came a quiet reply.

Steve looked over to see Tony surrounded by hologram monitors, fingers flying over a hologram keyboard as he spun out lines and lines of code. He looked to be in a focused calm, a look Steve knew well from his own Tony.

“I’m gonna get you back home, Steve.”

Steve turned his head, looking back toward the ceiling. “Did you see?” he asked.

“No.”

Steve turned his head again, looking back. “You did.”

“No,” Tony said again. “I saw where you were, I took the glasses off.”

He thought back to that ballroom, the dark wood. Now it reminded him more of the nightmare that Wanda has shown him: his worst fear. “You finished the room.”

“I did,” Tony said distractedly.

“And you didn’t get divorced.”

“Correct.”

Steve frowned, moving to sit up on his elbows. “How did you fix it?”

Tony stopped typing and pushed back his chair. The screens all fell away, except one that was still running through lines and lines of code.

“I don’t really know. I guess we both realized we weren’t meant to do the life thing without each other.” Tony paused for a moment before letting out a little snort. “Or I guess he wasn’t supposed to do the life thing without me.”

“You were cheating on him,” Steve said, brow furrowing. As much as everyone loved to believe Tony was the kind of guy who ought to be known for that kind of thing, Steve knew that wasn’t really him.

“We were cheating on each other,” Tony said evenly. “Steve just didn’t do it like I did.”

Steve blinked in surprise, but decided not to press. He supposed it didn’t matter anyway. It wasn’t his life, and this wasn’t his Tony.

“We made it through,” Tony said, looking up from his hands. “It was a rough patch, but we both moved past it. Things got better.”

It sounded like Tony was just trying to convince himself, but Steve had seen it get better. He’d felt it.

“I want to go home,” Steve said quietly.

“I know,” Tony sighed. “I’m pretty close to getting you there. Do you feel…I mean, is he gone?”

“I think so,” Steve said, rubbing his temples. Exhaustion clung to his eyes, and he longed for Tony’s bed, the fluffy comforters and the soft pillows, and the scent of Tony’s impossibly expensive laundry detergent.

But he would miss this place, though he felt like he shouldn’t.

“Are you going to be okay?”

Tony chuckled at the question, but it was pained. “I think so, yeah. This—” He gesticulated, trying to find the words, “—experience has been a lot for me. But a good thing, I think. I was in a bad place before you came here, and this has…cleared things up.”

“Are you sure?” Steve asked. “Because what I’ve just seen in the last hour kinda makes me think maybe there’s a lot that hasn’t been cleared up.”

Tony smiled. “Well. Nothing you can clear up. When I kick the bucket, I think I’ll have a lot of questions to answer.”

“And you’re going to be okay until then?”

Tony gave a shrug, and Steve felt his eyes start to burn when he saw wetness in Tony’s. “As good as I can be, yeah,” Tony whispered. “I’ll make it. You’re the one who gets to start all over.”

Steve gave a little smile. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

“Sir,” Francine interrupted. “We’ve locked.”

“Time to go home,” Tony said quietly, standing up.  He offered his hand to Steve. “I’m probably very impatient back there.”

“Or you’ve dumped me,” Steve replied with a grin, taking Tony’s hand and pulling himself up. He paused for a moment, squinting a little. “You’re taller than him. Just a little bit.”

“Well,” Tony chuckled. “Can’t say I’ve heard that one before.”

Steve laughed, but it was hard not to feel sad as Tony led him toward another workspace connected to the lab. Even with all that he had learned thus far, he didn’t think he would ever know the full story of this world. It would take a lifetime to dissect what had happened here, and how it had affected Tony. Steve wasn’t even sure that Tony was really better, if he had changed from the man who had kidnapped other versions of Steve Rogers to experiment on.

They entered a massive room that looked like it had once been a garage. The ceilings were cavernous, the walls white with a sleek, glass finish.

There was an empty section of flooring, and when Tony tapped his watch, holograms burst from the center of the floor, creating a sphere-like shape of interconnected hologram pieces. Energy began to surge between them, and a low hum filled the room as the lights dimmed.

“Step in there and you’re home,” Tony said with a curt nod toward the platform. “You’ll be in Time Square.”

“Deja-vu,” Steve snorted, looking over the portal.

“I…” Tony trailed off, looking down at his hands. “I appreciate you…handling this as well as you did. I know I probably seem a little crazy to you, or something.”

Steve shook his head. “Given the circumstances, I think I’d have been a lot worse.”

“Doesn’t excuse it, though,” Tony said with a shrug.

Steve reached over, gently patting Tony’s shoulder. “I forgive you,” he said. “I can’t imagine the guilt that’s been weighing you down since they passed. I’m just glad I could be the one to help you past it.”

Tony’s eyes welled with tears again, and he hurried to wipe them. “Steve—”

“Maybe this is bad advice, but you’re allowed to grieve forever if you want,” Steve continued. “Hell, I still grieve for Bucky and he’s sitting right next to me. But don’t let it ruin the rest of your life, even if you think you deserve it.”

He waited for Tony to call him a hypocrite, but the accusation never came. This Tony never told him he was too hung up on Bucky, that he needed to let go. This Tony knew what that kind of loss felt like.

A silence hung in the room for a moment, and Steve knew it was time to go. The portal hummed, inviting him back.

“I will miss you,” Steve said at last. “And I hope things are easier for you now.”

He leaned over, pressing a kiss to Tony’s forehead. His lips lingered there until Tony relaxed a bit more.

“You’ll make it,” Steve whispered. “I know you will.”

Tony let out a little snort, then patted Steve’s arm. “Go home,” he said, his voice strangled with emotion. “Make sure he takes good care of you.”

“I will,” Steve promised, stepping back.

Tony’s eyes widened or a moment. “Wait,” he said, turning on his heel and dashing back toward the lab.

“Tony?” Steve moved to follow, but he heard Tony returning soon enough, his backpack in hand.

“You almost forgot it,” Tony panted, handing it over.

Steve took the familiar weight into his hand, then slung the backpack on with practiced ease, even going to far as to clip it at his waist, just in case the trip wasn’t as seamless as his arrival.

“Thank you,” he murmured, giving Tony one last smile. “Stay safe, Tony.”

Tony offered a little salute, and Steve stepped into the portal, enveloped in a churning rainbow of color and light. He was weightless for only a moment, and then surrounded with roaring noise.

Steve landed on his feet this time, just beside a moving car. He hopped out of the way as the driver honked at him, then took off at a full sprint toward the tower. His phone buzzed relentlessly in his backpack, but Steve kept running, doing his best not to knock anyone over as he flew down the street.

This had to be the right dimension. Everything felt right, and nothing looked any different than he remembered. There was no grass lining rooftops, and all of the cars were noisy and rattling off exhaust.

Tony had to be here.

A sentinel found him before he was able to make it to the tower, scanning him and demanding where he had been.

“Captain, there have been no sighting of you for thirty-six hours—please report—”

Steve burst through the glass doors into the tower lobby, not bothering with the hideaway entrance. He darted into the elevator, punching in his access code as fast as he could manage. This had to be right—it had to be. But he would only be able to tell once he saw Tony.

The elevator doors opened at the penthouse. There was a crash in the bedroom, and Steve sprinted across the living room toward it.

Tony stood there, hopping on one leg as he hurriedly tried to pull on a pair of sweats, His t-shirt was wrinkled, his hair unkempt, and his face had creases in it from where he must have slept on wrinkled sheets. .

His Tony.

Steve cracked a grin, tears welling in his eyes as he ran across the room, scooping Tony up in his arms.

“Steve?” Tony croaked out, gripping tight to him, his fingers curling into Steve’s shirt. “What the hell happened—where were you?”

Steve buried his face into the join of Tony’s neck and shoulder, shaking with something between a laugh and a sob. He was home.

He set Tony down after a moment, looking into his eyes. Dark, warm. Nothing like the bright blue he’d seen during his time away. Steve’s hands framed Tony’s face, thumbing at his perfect cheeks, unable to stop smiling. It was really him.

“I don’t wanna fight with you anymore,” Steve whispered, leaning forward to press kisses to Tony’s forehead and alone his brow. “I love you so much, Tony.”

“Woah, woah.” Tony rubbed Steve’s arms, concerned. “Baby, slow down. Tell me what’s going on—what happened to you? Did someone hurt you?”

“I don’t know how to explain,” Steve said with a shake of his head. “I don’t—It’s not important. What’s important is I’m back now, and I’m not gonna let stupid fights get in the way of us ever again.”

Tony reached up, gently feeling Steve’s forehead for a fever. “You sure you’re feeling okay?”

Steve nodded, his smile threatening to crack his face in two. “I’m feeling amazing. I’m sorry I was gone.”

“Okay, but where were you? I texted you, I called you—I thought something happened.”

“I’ll tell you,” Steve promised, his arms winding around Tony’s waist. “I just had to see you first, tell you how I feel.”

“I’m getting that vibe,” Tony chuckled. He looked concerned, but rested his head against Steve’s chest anyway. “I was worried about you.”

“I know,” Steve soothed, resting his cheek against Tony’s head. “I’m here now, though. Forever, I promise.”

  



	12. Chapter 12

“Pepper says I look daddish in this sweater,” Tony said, picking some fluff from incredibly soft cashmere. “What do you think?”

“I think you look very daddish,” Steve agreed distractedly as he worked to tie his tie. Hosting a Christmas party had sounded like a great way to announce their engagement, but now that it was the evening of, Steve wasn’t so sure. A ridiculous amount of people were attending, and their spacious ballroom venue had already looked packed full when Steve had checked the live feed online (yes, they had a live feed for a Christmas party).

“I can hear your frowning,” Steve murmured. “Don’t frown. You look very handsome.”

“Says my fiancé,” Tony muttered. “I’m too young to look like a dad.”

Steve cocked a brow.  “Are you?”

Tony scowled at him. “Watch your mouth, Rogers. Thin ice.”

Steve grinned, turning away from the mirror to face his new fiancé. Tony did look awfully handsome in a dark sweater, and the slight v-neck cut made it less irritating for the sensitive tissue still healing on his chest. It would take a lot of time for the bone and tissue grafts to fully assimilate, but Tony was feeling better every day—or so he said.

Occasionally, Steve found himself thinking of the other Tony from years ago. He woke up from nightmares of fire and a shriveled, burning hand. He heard the scream of a child in his ear. In some dreams he heard that laughter too, and felt the deep, oozing warmth that Steve had felt being a family with Tony and Peter.

He had purposely tried to steer clear of things he’d seen in that dimension. He talked with Tony before they ever got too annoyed with each other, and he had made it a rule never to go to bed angry..

Part of him didn’t even want to get married, just to avoid any similarities from that other dimension. Tony wanted a baby eventually, so Steve had insisted they adopt a girl. He didn’t know if he’d be able to stand having a son that might look or sound anything like Peter.

“You’re spacing again,” Tony murmured, stepping up to him and framing Steve’s face with his hands. “Wanna talk?”

Steve smiled almost sheepishly before shaking his head.  “Just thinking.”

“I know. Sometimes that worries me.” Tony played it of like a joke, but Steve could see the concern in his eyes, and maybe a bit of fear too.

“Hold still,” Steve said, reaching up to gently wipe an eyelash from under Tony’s eye.

“Can’t have a single lash out of place,” Tony grinned. He leaned in, pressing their lips together for a gentle kiss. “You ready?”

“I think so,” Steve said with a nod. He held up his hand, showing off the vibranium band, a single line of red titanium alloy running around the center. “Are you?”

Tony lifted his hand, also sporting a band. His was the reverse: red titanium alloy with a vibranium stripe. “Yes, but I meant it when I said we have to clarify we aren’t married. I don’t want anyone think they’re getting out of this without getting a mega-wedding.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “I thought we agreed on a private wedding?”

“Agree to disagree.” Tony pecked his cheek, then grabbed a pair of flashy sunglasses from his dresser. “Let’s get going, we’re getting past the fashionable part of fashionably late.”

Steve glanced around the room once more to see if he might have forgotten anything, but his wallet and keys were tucked in his pockets, his phone in hand, and the key card to the hotel was waiting for them in the lobby.

“You sure you don’t want to talk?” Tony asked, hallway out the door.

“I feel like I’m forgetting something,” Steve said distractedly, looking around the room again. Phone, keys, wallet…what was missing?

“We’ll be back tomorrow, and anything that can’t wait until then Happy can bring.”

“I know, but…” Steve frowned.

Tony returned to his side, his hand resting on the small of Steve’s back in a comforting gesture. “Presents, maybe? Mistletoe? Something else Christmas-y?”

Steve chuckled, but shook his head. “Nah. Forget it—I obviously did.”

“And you were trying to call _me_ old.’ Tony took his hand, lacing their fingers together and squeezing tight. “C’mon.”

Steve finally looked away from the bedroom and followed Tony into the elevator. Their close friends already knew about the engagement, but it was still exciting to announce it to the world. And seeing Tony so ready was as comforting as it was encouraging. The past few years had done wonders for their relationship.

Even if Steve had never told him what happened in that alternate dimension, only that he’d gone to one.

He had tried to, many times, but feared that doing so would influence Tony somehow, change things.

“I like those glasses,” Steve said, pecking Tony on the nose. “Makes you look mysterious.”

Tony laughed, squeezing Steve’s hand. “Do they? Like maybe I’m hiding me engagement from the world?”

“Something like that.”

The elevator doors closed, and Steve looped  an arm around Tony’s waist, tugging him close until they were hip to hip. Tony settled into the hold, letting out a contented sigh.

It didn’t feel fair sometimes, that Steve got to have the life with Tony that the other Tony hadn’t. That he was able to prevent mistakes that their alternate selves had made. But he was thankful for it all the same. He had Tony, and they had a lifetime of happiness to look forward to.

“You sure everything’s alright?” Tony asked, tipping his head up to look at him.

Steve grinned, pressing a kiss to Tony’s forehead. “Absolutely. It’s just a big step, I’m trying to get myself ready for everyone else knowing about it.”

Tony smiled. “Not getting cold feet, are you?”

He chuckled, kissing Tony’s forehead again. “Never.”

The elevator doors opened to the hotel lobby, where several paparazzi were already flashing photos as they strode out to the car. Tony held his hand a little tighter, but Steve knew he was ready for this. Nerves weren’t enough to tear down what they had now.

Once they were situated in the Escalade with Happy, Steve felt Tony relax.

“It’s gonna be fun,” Steve assured him. “Look at me a second.”

Tony turned, offering him a little indignant smirk.

“Eyelash,” Steve explained as he reached up. “You rub your eyes more and you’re gonna lose all of those pretty things.” He gently wiped the lash from Tony’s cheek, and shared a kiss with him once it was gone.

“I love you,” Steve reminded him.

“Love you too,” Tony replied. “But my mouth is gonna be sore by the time we get there if we keep up all this sappy stuff.”

  

As Steve returned a witty reply of his own, the eyelash from Tony’s cheek settled on his shoulder. Once Steve’s head turned to look out the window, it wiggled before imperceptibly slithering through the threads of Tony’s sweater. Elsewhere, various tiny tufts of lint that Tony had been picking at earlier began to reassemble themselves, aligning on Tony’s shoulder and collar as he spoke to Happy about guests.

It only took a few minutes for the eyelash to reach its destination, where the nanobot at the end of the hair follicle burrowed back into Tony’s upper lash.

An impossibly tiny camera flickered to life, able to capture every line of Steve’s features down to the pores of his skin when he leaned in close. The other nanobots were already aligned to provide perfect audio to their origin, and a thousand others were at the ready to replace any that fell from their host.

A dimension away, Tony adjusted parts on a new McLaren in his garage, only occasionally glancing at the hologram feed from his nanobots. He paused for a moment when Tony and Steve exited the car, his chest pulling painfully at the sight of Steve so excited, so happy. He glanced at his watch, swearing under his breath.

“Francine, let Rhodey know I’m on the way,” he said with a grunt as he rolled out from under the car.

“Sure thing, sir,” Francine replied.

He waved his hand, sending the hologram screen away before grabbing a pair of glasses,

There, he had VR of the other Tony’s reality as he walked through the party, talking to guests while Steve gushed beside him.

He could see it in Steve’s eyes sometimes. The want. The pull to come back, to remember what it was like in a world where he had been completely cherished.

With a slight movement of his hand, the camera feed moved to his peripheral, but allowed him to keep an eye on things as he made his way up to where Rhodey was undoubtedly pacing.

“How are we looking for the afterparty?” Tony asked, running a finger along his most recent armor. He rubbed the dust between his fingers as he continued up the stairway.

“Monitors in each room, at the ready for movements as necessary,” Francine replied. “Attempted sweep by Stark’s security bots was successfully avoided via Steve’s personal belongings protocols.”

“How many bots are left?”

“Four hundred thousand remain ready to come online. But sir…there was talk of a clean. What is protocol if the backpack is to be thrown away?”

Tony paused. In his peripheral he saw Steve popping a bottle of champagne with Tony, each trading a foamy sip before holding it up to a cheering crowd of friends.

He continued walking.

“He won’t throw it away. It’s all he has left of me.”

“Should we come up with—”

“He won’t throw it away,” Tony cut. “I want another visual from Tony’s shoulder. He keeps looking away.”

Francine didn’t answer right away. “Yes, sir.”

The anger on Tony’s face melted at the sight of Rhodey, replaced with a chipper grin.

“Hope you’re ready to get your ass kicked, Colonel,” Tony teased.

“When you can pass a PT test, we’ll talk,” Rhodey cracked back, greeting Tony with a pat to the shoulder. “I was worried I’d lost you to the lab.”

“Not this time,” Tony assured him.

Steve leaned over, kissing Tony in a way he swore he could feel on his own lips. That shoulder camera should have been on already, giving him a better indication of the message behind that kiss. He’d gotten very good at reading the visual over the past few years, even if he couldn’t feel it.

“Get changed and I’ll meet you on the track in five,” Rhodey said, looking at his watch. “I’m gonna time you, so don’t be late.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony replied, waving him off. Rhodey clapped him on the shoulder once more before picking up a jog toward the main doors.

As Tony entered the hallway restroom, Francine opened a panel in the wall, producing workout clothes. Meanwhile, Tony raised the volume on his feed.

“—not so bad,” Steve was saying as he sipped a champagne flute.

“Says the guy drinking champagne while I’m here sucking on sparkling grape juice,” Tony heard himself say in reply. It was strange to hear his own voice when his mouth wasn’t moving.

Steve set down his glass and called over a server. “A bottle of sparkling grape juice, please.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Tony said with a smile.

“Of course I did. I love you.”

Tony lowered projected the screen to cover the entirety of his vision and adjusted the volume—this time only to pick up Steve’s voice. He didn’t need Rhodey catching any weird looks on his face while he ran.

He always ran faster when Steve was in his head.

By the time he met Rhodey on the track and started jogging, the engagement party was in full swing. He watched Steve dance, listened to the whispers about guests, the inside jokes the three of them shared now. The things Tony would know whenever Steve decided to come back. No gap to bridge, no relationship to rebuild.

He watched Steve when Tony didn’t. He caught the little smiles, the happiness—everything Tony wasn’t paying attention to. Didn’t pay attention to.

Some day that would come back to haunt him.

Tony just hoped that some day would come soon.

If not, he had four hundred thousand other ways to make sure he didn’t give up on the man he loved. Not this time. Not ever again.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for tagging along on the ride, everyone!! feel free to send a prompt of your own to my tumblr (@chubbydino) and if you really, really want something cool, keep an eye out for the Marvel Trumps Hate event in a few weeks - I'll have two fics up for auction there (for charity!)! 


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